


You Really Oughta Know

by SylvanWitch



Series: Biker 'Verse [6]
Category: Sons of Anarchy, Supernatural
Genre: Apocalyptic crossover of doom, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 15:54:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jax Teller has been a lot of things in his life:  Outlaw biker, King of the World, Dean Winchester's lover.  But diplomat?  Yeah, he didn't see that one coming.  Still, if they're going to rebuild the world, he's going to have to learn to watch his words.  As long as Dean's watching his back, he'll be alright, right?  Volume Four of the Biker 'Verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Really Oughta Know

_Sometimes, you’ve got to know when to cut your losses, sit down, and shut up.  Other times, you’ve got to know to reach for your gun.  Occasionally, you have to do both._ (Acts of the Sons 1:22-24)

 

Austin is an asshole.

 

Day Three of the summit and already Jax has had enough of the guy’s mouth.  All he does is talk about what’s best for Texas, as if the big state is the only one at the table.

 

As if there’s much of Texas, as a whole, left.

 

_Who the fuck does he think he’s kidding?_

 

Jax must’ve let that last thought out of his mouth because there’s a sudden, tense silence in the room, broken only by Austin taking a gusty indrawn breath to blast Jax.

 

Wearily, Jax straightens in his seat—he’d been slouched, one leg thrown over the arm of the uncomfortable metal-frame chair—and shuts Austin down with a raised hand.

  
It’s not really a gesture of concession because Jax has a gun in it.

 

“This what we’re really arguing about?” Jax asks casually.  The barrel of his forty-five is steady on the target of the other man’s heart.  “Guns?  ‘cause we’ve got plenty of those to go around, assuming we can all reach an agreement on sharing our inventories.  But if you aren’t willing to bring what you’ve got to the table, you don’t belong here.”

 

Jax has been saying more or less the same thing since talks started and Austin made it clear that he wanted to be boss.  On every issue—water rights, travel routes, communication channels—Austin disagreed with Jax, never mind that Jax had the majority of opinion in the room or that there were other, bigger cities at the table.

 

Since Austin hadn’t gotten the message before now, Jax shouldn’t be surprised he’s still pissing and moaning. 

 

Hence the gun.

 

The very illegal gun, since they’d all agreed to check their weapons at the door.

 

Of course, it’s Jax’s door.

 

Austin pales first and then starts to redden, probably in preparation for another blow-up, but he’s stopped from saying anything that will get him dead by Salina’s easy, melodious voice.

 

“Now, boys, am I gonna hafta get a ruler out and measure ‘em?”

 

Salina, Utah, otherwise known as Madge, is fifty going on filthy, her snapping brown eyes and generous red mouth already notorious around the big conference table that they’d dragged into the clubhouse rec area, displacing Juice’s defunct computer and crowding the jukebox into the pool table. 

 

Which made it a bitch to take shots from one end of the table without skipping the CD that was playing.

 

Jax’s eyes never leave Austin, but he smiles lewdly and says, “I’m game.”

 

“Bet you’d like that, you fuckin’ fag,” Austin answers, apparently oblivious to the gun.  He’s really not the brightest headlight on the road.

 

Jax doesn’t take offense, though.  It’s not like he hasn’t heard this homophobic shit before.  “Nah, you’re not my type—all whine, no work.”

 

“Jax,” Madge warns, and he looks at her this time.  She’s still smirking, but her eyes are serious.

 

He lowers the gun but doesn’t take it off of the table. 

 

“Maybe we could just agree to—“ Flagstaff starts.  He’s a slight guy, maybe one-sixty soaking wet, with bad acne scars and a nervous tic in his left eye.  Jax had wondered what the survivors of Flagstaff, Arizona, were thinking when they sent Walt to them, but once he’d seen the guy shoot—Day Two they’d all taken a field trip to the Charming Army shooting range—he’d understood their reasoning.

 

“Anyone care that he’s got a gun at the table?” Austin barks, drowning out Flagstaff’s presumably reasonable suggestion.  Walt didn’t talk much, but when he did, it was worth hearing.

 

Irritated, Jax’s hand twitches toward the gun when Fallon, Nevada, says, “For god’s sake, Austin, shut the fuck up.  We’ve been at it three hours already and haven’t agreed to a goddamn thing.  I’d like to get home before fall, you peckerwood.”  The woman is all edges, planed down cheekbones and hard angles, her long black hair caught up in a no-nonsense bun, her mouth thin with displeasure.  If Jax still swung that way, he wouldn’t mind seeing what he could get that mouth to do.

 

Jax can’t help but laugh at Fallon (Judy’s) observation, and he catches Madge smothering a snicker, too.  Flagstaff is typically silent, but Montrose, Colorado (Jerry), coughs ostentatiously, like he’s suddenly got something caught in his throat.  Three Rivers (Henry) grimaces morosely—he’s a bible-thumper and dislikes swearing, never mind taking the Lord’s name in vain. 

 

Jax thinks that’s kind of funny, considering where they’re all sitting and how they got here—trial by God’s holy fire from the sky.  Real sinners never pass the Gate, after all.

 

_Whatever._

 

Jax moves his hand away from the gun and waits for the others to work it out.  He’s sick of mediating Austin’s asshole behavior, and besides, it’s almost lunchtime.  He’s thinking about trying to catch a quickie with Dean at the lunch break, only half-listening to the argument at the table, when Madge says, loud and sternly, “Enough!”

 

He figures he should bring his attention back to the room.

 

Austin is an interesting shade of purple, and if Three Rivers’ lips pucker any harder, Jax is convinced he’ll swallow them.

 

Montrose is clenching his fists and Fallon looks like she’s going to lose her self-control and lunge across the table to throttle Austin.

  
Much as Jax might like to see that, this is his rodeo.

 

“Thanks, Madge,” Jax says, nodding to the woman, who settles back in her chair like her job here is done.

“Look, we all agreed to the summit of the South and Southwestern States”

 

(It had taken them two hours on Day One to agree to the name.)

 

“—for the purpose of building a confederacy”

 

(Another six hours on Day One to decide to call it a confederacy)

 

“—to the benefit of all of our people and to make it easier to protect this part of the country from Scavengers and the Undead.”

 

(Dean still didn’t agree to that last –“Freaks aren’t undead, they’re infected”—but he wasn’t a sitting member of the summit, so he’d had to settle for bitching to Jax about it in one of their rare free hours.)

 

“We agreed that to be a confederacy, we’d have to make compromises that would serve the majority of our people.  So far, we’ve managed to pound out some pretty good agreements.  But if we can’t compromise on defense measures, we’re going to have a problem.”

 

“That’s easy for you to say—you’ve got a fuckin’ army and a goddamned arsenal,” Austin shouts, arm waving in the general direction of Charming Army’s stockpile, which had been part of the tour on Day Two’s field trip.   “What’s to say you don’t use it to come after one of us?”

 

Jax raises an eyebrow at that and curls his lip in a sneer.  “Austin, the biggest things we’ve got in our arsenal are a couple of RPGs.  What good’ll those do us when the nearest of you is over 200 miles away?”  Jax jerks his chin in the direction of Fallon, who shrugs like she hasn’t got a care in the world.  “Besides, asshole, we’ve already shown you everything we’ve got.”

 

“And why should we believe you?  Just because you’re God’s bitch doesn’t mean you’re honest.” 

 

Jax itches to pick up the gun and shoot the fucker through the head, save them all the aggravation of listening to his bullshit any longer, but Madge once again intervenes.

 

“Are you that stupid, Austin?  We’re sittin’ in the man’s house!  He organized this summit, hosted it, invited us all here.  We all passed the test—“

 

“Not all of us,” Three Rivers is quick to point out.

  
That shuts them all up for a minute.

  
Las Cruces, New Mexico, the last delegate to arrive in Charming, hadn’t even had a chance to share his name with the rest of them before he was lanced into ash by a particularly vicious streak of lightning out of the clear cerulean sky.

 

 _There’s always one_ , Jax had thought at the time, and he’s thinking it now when Madge continues, making her irritation at being interrupted obvious by her tone.

 

“—passed the test with flying colors, so clearly, we’re meant to be here.  And it _should_ say something to you—if you weren’t the poster boy for village idiots everywhere—that Jax has proven himself a capable ruler, was instrumental in saving our collective asses during the Apocalypse, has an impressive army totally loyal to him, and shares his bed with a man who rose from the dead and can heal with the power of his hands.  What about any of that don’t you get, boy?  The man’s doing God’s work.  The least you could do is shut up and let him!”

 

“I don’t think it’s been clearly established that God is behind what’s happened in Charming,” Three Rivers demurs. 

 

Flagstaff nods.  “Agreed.  We don’t have definitive proof, aside from word of mouth and one, admittedly impressive, light show.  Still…Mr. Teller did ask us here…”

 

“And I’ve got a complete inventory in binders on the bar,” Jax adds, nodding his head in the direction of neatly stacked blue binders, clearly labeled _Charming Arsenal Inventory as of 05-20-2011_ in J.C.’s big, looping handwriting.  “Where’s yours?”

 

All eyes turn to Austin, momentarily forgetting the larger point about Jax’s authority.

 

Austin glowers and huffs but says nothing, which proves that he’s got…

 

“—nothing.  Okay?  I don’t have anything.  The people in Austin are—we’re independent.  We don’t—“

 

“Jesus, man, do you even have authority to be here?” Fallon growls, glaring at him across the table.

 

“Yes!” he blusters, but Jax isn’t so sure. 

 

“We can find out soon enough,” Jax drawls, nodding meaningfully at the simple black landline phone visible behind the bar.  “I can call Peri, have her get on the horn to Austin.  We can clear this up in—“

 

“My authority isn’t in question!” Austin roars.  “It’s him we’ve got to worry about.  Don’t you see!  He lured us here under false pretenses—said he wanted a union.  But that’s not what he wants.  He wants a dictatorship!  He wants to show us his power, cow us into submitting to his will, and then—“

 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Austin—“ Madge starts.

 

“That’s a little para—“ Montrose says at the same time.

 

“I think we should—“ Flagstaff is saying, too.

 

Jax’s sharp, hard, “That’s enough!” cuts through the cacophony.  “I’m calling a recess.  Break for lunch.  Cool off.  I’ll have Peri do the inquiries in Austin—“ 

 

Austin takes a loud breath like he’s going to argue, and Jax raises the gun and points it at him.  His meaning is absolutely clear.

 

“—and we’ll reconvene in an hour and a half.  You’ve got a line of credit at Miriam’s café if you want to head over.  If not, I can get J.C. and Mouse in here, have them make you sandwiches.  Your choice.  An hour and a half,” he repeats, rising from his chair but keeping his gun in his hand, making it clear that Austin has reached the end of Jax’s already taxed patience.

 

Austin shoots daggers at Jax but for a change has the sense to keep his mouth shut.  Fallon, Madge, and Montrose head toward the door, presumably to Miriam’s.  Three Rivers says, “I’d like to stay here and read through your inventory, if I may.”

“Sure,” Jax answers, trying to let the tension out of his shoulders, eyes still on Austin, though the man is finally backing away from the table.  “I’ll have the girls make you some lunch.  You want anything?” he asks Walt, who nods and stands, as well, heading for the binders on the bar.

 

Jax gets on the walkie, calls the girls, who have been hanging at the Hostel since the summit began.  The delegates aren’t staying in the clubhouse, of course—Opie’d arranged quarters for them at one of Charming’s few mission-style houses, an out-of-place monstrosity originally conceived as a resort complex before the owner was unfortunately fried during the first days of the Apocalypse.  Now, it serves pretty well for temporary shelter when they’re busy processing incoming survivors.  And, of course, as accommodations for visiting delegates from surviving cities.

 

Surviving cities.

  
Jax still remembers the gut-clenching thrill of terror and joy that struck him when he first heard voices coming in over Peri Winkler’s short wave radio set.  Since that day almost three months ago, he’s had equal moments of regret and relief at the discovery that Charming wasn’t, after all, the last bastion of civilization in a world gone terribly wrong.

 

Right now, he’s leaning heavily toward regret.

 

“Hey, J.C.,” Jax says into the phone when he hears the sweetbutt’s familiar, soft voice.  She talks like she’s always wearing a smile and nothing else.

 

“Hey, Jax,” J.C. answers easily. “You need us for lunch.”

 

“Yeah,” he answers, letting some apology slip into his voice.

  
“No problem, Jax.  Anything for you, baby.” 

 

Jax laughs at that, happy to hear the flirt, aching a little for how much he misses the way things used to be—easier, with just his man and his brothers and sisters at his back.

 

“You seen anything of Dean?”  He could just call Dean on the walkie, but he knows J.C. likes to keep abreast of their relationship.  She’s like the club matchmaker, prides herself on her little part in keeping Jax and Dean happy and together.

 

“I think he’s at the hospital,” she answers, a little note of worry in her voice.  “He’s working too hard.”

 

Jax nods, says, “Yeah, I know,” into the phone.  He intends to take care of that, at least for a little while.  “Be here in five?”

 

“You got it, Jax,” she answers promptly.  Jax hears her calling to Mouse as she hangs up the phone.

 

“Girls’ll be here in a few minutes.  Until then, can I get you anything?  Beer?  Water?”

 

“Some of that cider you have would be appreciated,” Flagstaff answers.

 

“Anything for you, Henry?” Jax asks Three Rivers as he’s pouring Flagstaff’s cider.

 

The dour man shakes his head and keeps reading.

Jax excuses himself long enough to hit the head and get Peri on the walkie, telling her to check with the city of Austin about their delegate.  “Make sure he is who he says he is.”

  
As usual, Peri chirps a prompt and happy, “Yessir, Mr. Teller.”  He can’t break her of the habit, and he’s almost gotten used to it now anyway.

 

It’s an awkward few minutes after Jax returns to the rec area and while he waits for the girls and their escort, Sack, to show up.  He’d known the girls would bring him.  It’s a rule that they don’t leave any of the delegates in the clubhouse without a Son or two to keep an eye on things.

 

As soon as he’s exchanged the usual greetings with Sack and the sweetbutts, Jax is out the door, not even stopping to take a deep breath of the sweet California breeze before he’s on his bike and headed for St. Thomas.  He feels like he hasn’t seen Dean in weeks, even though the summit’s only been going on for three days.

  
Three interminable days.

  
Three days of too little sleep and too much stress.

 

Days during which Dean has spent the bulk of his time keeping clear of the negotiations by working on his healing skills at the hospital.

 

Jax knows Dean still isn’t comfortable with the gift God gave him, with the ability to heal with his hands just by thinking about it.

 

He knows, too, that Dean hasn’t mastered how the gift works, when and where to use it, what makes it happen.  Dean isn’t good at not knowing things, and lately, the stress of repeated failures has started to show, Dean’s stoic mask slipping a little, lines at the corners of his mouth, a muscle working overtime in his jaw.

 

Jax can see that Dean is hurting and uncertain, but he can’t for the life of him figure out how to help the other man.  For one thing, they hardly see each other.  For another, Dean seems to be hell-bent on doing it all by himself.

 

Maybe it’s so that Jax can concentrate on the summit, on establishing alliances with surviving towns and cities.  Or maybe it’s his Winchester stubbornness rearing its rock-hard head.

 

Maybe it’s something else altogether.

  
Jax shakes his head free of it all, focusing on getting to the hospital, finding his lover, and helping Dean relax.  Thinking about how he’s going to do that causes Jax to overshoot the hospital driveway, but it’s worth it for a vision of Dean stretched out naked beneath him, thighs clamped tight to Jax, Jax grinding into Dean until Dean’s curses and Jax’s name blur together in a single, long shout.

 

He’s half-hard as he walks into the hospital, and his usual swagger serves only to accentuate that.  He’s not interested in hiding what he feels for Dean.

 

“Hey, Susan, is Dean here?” he asks the matronly woman who’s working the reception desk today.

 

“Ward Three,” she answers, and Jax’s smile slips a little.

Ward Three is for terminal patients. 

 

Nodding his thanks, Jax heads for the stairs—elevators use too much power—and hopes he’ll find Dean conscious when he gets there.  Sometimes the healing takes too much out of Dean, leaves him wrung out and exhausted for days.

 

Days when Dean gets nowhere, when someone dies because Dean couldn’t figure out how to save them—those days are often worse than if Dean was out cold, sleeping like the dead man he once was. On the days when there’s no salvation, though, Dean might as well be asleep for all the light that reaches his eyes.

 

Coming to the door to the second floor, Jax opens it, takes a right toward the Third Ward, forces himself to relax.  Dean will be fine. They’ll get out of here for awhile, find a nice sunny spot, spend some time skin on skin.

 

Hope firmly in hand, Jax heads toward the first open door on the ward.

 

*****

 

 _There’s only so much control a man can have of his life.  The rest of it is up to chance, fate, God—whatever.  Fact is, you take what’s thrown at you, and you make what you can from it.  A lucky man isn’t the one who gets all the breaks; he’s the one who makes the breaks out of the pieces life leaves him._ (Acts of the Sons 2:3-7)

 

Dean used to hate hospitals.  The smell.  The sounds, soft but somehow more intrusive, like death was sneaking around corners.  The sense of desperate hope as loved ones await word.

 

But in the last three months, Dean has spent way more time beside a hospital bed than he ever has in one himself, and from that angle, the place doesn’t look quite the same.

 

Sure, there’s still pain and suffering, sorrow and loss.  But there’s also cause for joy—little victories, big smiles. 

 

He’s still not comfortable when those smiles are aimed at him, when he’s the one being thanked.  He’s not used to that, never having run into it much Before.

 

But there’s something to be said for helping a kid get better and get out of the hospital, back home to his family.

 

Of course, those are the good days.

  
Days like this, when Dean can’t get so much as a spark out of his healing mojo, he feels the failure all the stronger for the sinking faith he sees in the patient’s eyes.  Usually, Dean’s the court of last resort, the one the doctors let in when they can’t figure out a way to save the dying.

 

That means Dean sometimes gets honest-to-god miracles.

 

More often, though, he’s got a bedside seat for the inevitable.

 

Today, he’s visiting Demar Brady, potential Prospect, reigning Foosball champ, and victim of leukemia.  Demar is eight, and today he got bad news.

 

Dean sits by the bed while Demar’s parents take a much-needed break.  He’d seen in Demar’s mom’s, Kelly’s, eyes that she was at the end of her impressively long rope; Demar’s dad, Duane, couldn’t stop shaking his head, like the latest cell count results were some kind of incredibly cruel practical joke.

 

“You think I’m going to die today?” Demar asks matter-of-factly.  The kid’s been in and out of Ward Three since he was six, so Dean figures he’s got a better handle on mortality than most people.

 

Dean shrugs.  “I don’t know.  I hope not.”  He makes it a point not to lie to Demar.  Some kids can’t take the truth, but Demar’s always been demanding that way.

 

“And you don’t remember what it was like?  You know, when you died?”

 

Dean doesn’t bother to mention he still wakes up streaming with sweat, chest heaving, from memories of hell.  He knows that’s not what the kid means.

 

“Nah, I don’t.  I think it was cool, though.”

 

“Why’d they send you back, then?”

 

It’s a good question, to which Dean still doesn’t have a solid answer.

 

“I think…there were things I still needed to do here.”

 

“Like take care of Mr. Teller?” 

 

Dean snorts at that.  The idea of anyone “taking care of” Jax Teller, President of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, outlaw biker, and King of the World…

 

Well…  “Yeah, I guess.”

 

Demar nods sagely.  “You and him are good together.”

 

Dean laughs this time, short and sharp.  “How do you know?”

 

“I seen you out the window kissing on the motorcycle.”

 

Busted.

 

“Maybe I’ve got some reason to be here, too,” Demar continues, totally oblivious to the rush of heat in Dean’s face. 

 

“I think you do, kiddo,” he answers after a delay, which he covers by pretending to need a cup of water from the tray table by the bed.  What he needs is a goddamned clue how to work his healing mojo.

 

Dean sends up a heartfelt plea to a God he still doesn’t trust.  _Help me out here, Big Guy.  Demar’s just a kid._

 

Nothing.

 

A sound from the doorway brings their twin attention to Jax, who’s standing there with a smirk on his face, hands in his pockets.  “I interrupting?”

 

“No, Mr. Teller.  We were just talkin’ about—“

 

“—whether red or green Jell-o is better.  You want to weigh in?” Dean covers.

 

“Red, definitely.”  Jax nods like it’s the most important decision he’s made that day.

 

Dean knew he’d say that.

 

A few months ago—hell, a few weeks ago—that realization might’ve made Dean squirm, but lately, maybe because he and Jax don’t see each other very much, what with the conference and Dean’s “training” and everything else…  Anyway, Dean’s been taking contentedness whenever he can get it.

  
He doesn’t it call it happiness, not even in his head.  He knows how _that_ shit works. 

 

 

But knowing something stupid like Jax’s Jell-o preferences (Jell-o is a priority commodity on supply runs these days) just makes Dean feel like they’ve passed some kind of test and are in the biding part of the relationship, the part he never got to with anyone before, unless you count Sam, and that wasn’t the same, being blood and all.

 

Plus, Dean still can’t think about Sam too much without his heart lurching painfully in his chest like it wants to give out on him.

 

“I like green,” Demar says, calling Dean’s attention back to the room.

 

“Green’s good,” Dean agrees, smiling and making to rise.

 

“You should get outta here, spend some time with your man.”

  
Jax’s bark of laughter is loud along the hushed ward, and it makes Dean feel warm through his chest, like his heart’s expanding to take up all the space there.

 

“Remind me to ask your folks if you can ride with me when you get out of here,” Jax answers, sidling over to the bed to offer Demar a complicated slap-up that leaves Dean feeling a little left out.

 

“Cool!”  The boy’s face lights up, and for a minute, his smile erases the deep shadows under his eyes and the grayish tint of his lips and gums.

 

Dean knocks knuckles with the kid in a far more demure fashion and then says, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

 

The kid’s answering laugh suggests what Demar thinks of Dean’s restrictions, and Dean leaves the ward smiling, Jax brushing Dean’s shoulder with his own on every second step.

 

Outside, Dean takes his first full breath of the day.  It’s glorious.  No hospital smells, and the sun is shining, the sky a brilliant, post-Apocalypse blue.

 

The majority of the car-driving population being dead does a lot to clean up the air pollution.  One of those bonuses Revelation didn’t talk about.

 

“Where to?” Dean asks, heading toward the Impala, parked in the staff lot. He’s got an honorary parking pass, despite one of the doctor’s vehement protests.  Tara had backed Dean up on it, though.

 

Jax shrugs elaborately, and Dean feels excitement zing up his spine.

 

It’s been awhile since they’ve had some quality alone-time.

 

“Back seat’s not really big enough,” Dean says, trying to tease the secret out of Jax.

  
Jax snorts.  “No shit.  I’ve still got bruises on the backs of my knees.”

 

“Not my fault.  I told you not to do it that way…”

 

“Yeah, yeah… .  Anyway, I’ve got a place in mind.  Follow me?”  Jax’s leg is in mid-swing over the seat of his bike, so it wasn’t really a request.

Dean nods and gets in the Impala, starts her up, rolls down the window and cranks up the stereo.  Jax grins as he taps on his brain bucket and backs his bike out from the spot beside Dean’s.

 

King of the World doesn’t need a parking pass at all, the fucker.

 

Jax leads him out of town to the north, past the few neighborhoods that haven’t yet been entirely re-populated—closer to Charming’s center, there are no vacant homes—and beyond the Charlottas’ beanfields, already green and lush.  They pass the town compost pile, air heavy with the cloying brown smell of it, an empty auto body shop, a closed VFW post, a couple of trailers listing on their eroding cinder blocks.  In front of one of them, a faded sign promises _3 Amature Videos 4 $9.99!_

 

It’s not a part of Charming Dean has seen much of, except at night on patrol, back in the days when he still did patrols, and then it was at speed in the dark.  
  
Nowadays, Dean doesn’t pull patrol duty.  People seem to think he needs his sleep for more important work.

 

Dean shakes off the unpleasant feeling that gives him, like he’s playing some kind of long con.  It’s not his fault he can’t make the healing magic work regularly.

 

_Unless it is._

 

Refusing to start that vicious circle again, Dean concentrates on the open road, the sun through the windshield, Metallica on the stereo, and the sight of his lover in front of him looking like some wild thing just drifting through town.

 

It makes him smile.

 

His smile gets wider when he sees where Jax is leading them.

 

Right at the far northeastern edge of Charming there’s a big Quonset hut, corrugated metal painted a faded blue-green, weeds growing up its sides.  The once-white door is streaked with blood-colored rust now, and it squeals like hell when Jax slides it open a minute later, after they’ve parked and met in front of it.

 

The Sons had stocked the Quonset hut with “surplus” weapons, the ones they don’t want in their official arsenal.  Long before Jax had discovered that Austin is an asshole, he’d suggested the stockpile in case of “unforeseen contingencies.”

 

Dean loves it when Jax talks like that.

 

The sharp sent of gun-oil and well-loved metal, of unspent ammunition and coils of cordite meets Dean’s nose and he breathes in hard, the smell cranking him up.

 

Jax makes a big show of unclipping his walkie and setting it on a crate marked, “Floor Wax,” but which Dean happens to know contains AK-47s.  “No signal in here,” he says by way of explanation.

  
“Huh,” Dean answers, “Guess we should probably head back outside, then…”

 

“Shut up,” Jax says, crowding into Dean’s space, backing him up against a tall, narrow box that might house an anti-aircraft gun.

“Why, Mr. Teller.  I’m shocked.  Are you trying to seduce me?”

 

Jax smiles, leaning close, nipping Dean’s earlobe hard before he breathes, “Yeah, I heard you were easy,” and then fastens his teeth to the thin skin just behind Dean’s ear.

 

The bite hurts, but in a good way, and Dean feels it all the way to his dick, which twitches with definite interest.  It’s not like he hasn’t gotten _any_ lately—they exchanged hand-jobs in the shower only that morning.  But they both like to take their time, and they both like it loud.

  
Neither of those things has been doable in recent days.

 

Dean tells himself that’s why he’s already half-hard and groaning like he might die—again—if Jax doesn’t get his pants off right the fuck now. 

 

“Slut,” Jax smirks audibly into Dean’s ear, using the excuse of it to lick his way around the edge.

 

“Fuck,” Dean breathes out, letting his head fall back against the crate.  It’s not a total surrender, though.  Dean’s hands are busy on Jax’s belt, pulling it open so he can slide a hand into Jax’s pants without unbuttoning them.

 

He’s lost weight, which makes it easier than usual—Jax likes his jeans loose—and Dean files it away in the back of his head to make sure Jax is eating. 

 

It’s Jax’s turn to groan, breath wet and hot in Dean’s ear, when Dean wraps his hand around Jax’s cock and squeezes, not hard, just firmly, holding his lover, feeling the weight of him before stroking him from base to tip slowly, the silken slide of that delicate skin racing through Dean and filling his own cock.

 

God, he loves the feel of Jax in his hand.  Loves the shudder of Jax’s belly against the back of his wrist as he works him over, steady and unhurried, Jax swearing softly and saying Dean’s name, first with pleading, then with wonder, then with warning.

 

Dean stills and waits, raising his head to take in Jax’s face, flushed and hungry, eyes on Dean’s mouth, which he takes with a brutal surety that robs Dean of breath, his tongue hard against Dean’s, his teeth savaging his bottom lip, and Dean’s groaning again, loud into Jax’s mouth, Jax breaking away with, “Fuck!” and fumbling at Dean’s belt until Dean’s cock is tight in Jax’s callused hand.

 

It only takes a few strokes before Dean is cursing, saying, “Stop!  Fuck, stop!”

 

Jax listens too well, removing his hands and stepping back.  Dean’s got half a question formulated when Jax uses the space to spin Dean around and shove him into the crate face first, Dean’s hands coming up just in time to stop his forward momentum.

 

“Easy,” he growls, but there’s a whine in it that belies the warning, and Jax hears it, laughing.

 

“Fuck easy, you’re taking it rough.”

 

Dean’s ankles are hobbled by his jeans, which he can’t kick free over his boots, but he spreads his legs as far as he can, waiting, blood thundering in his ears as the seconds tick by.

 

A scuff on concrete tells him Jax has moved, and Dean cranes his neck around to see Jax retrieving a familiar metal can, its red cap thumbed off, gun oil slicking Jax’s fingers as he takes three steps back toward Dean and tosses the can aside casually, eyes already trailing down Dean’s back toward his intended target.

 

It’s weird being half-naked, feels unfinished somehow, but that lasts only the moment it takes for Jax to fasten his teeth to the tendon where Dean’s shoulder meets his neck and bite, one finger seeking and finding his hole at the same time, plunging in without pause, past the resisting ring, Dean barking a curse as Jax bites a little harder and works the digit in.

 

“God, fuck!”  It hurts, but not enough to stop, and when Jax releases Dean’s neck and roughs over the mark with the flat of his tongue, crooking his finger upward to just brush the sweet spot, Dean forgets the discomfort.

  
“Motherfucker,” Dean growls, “Fuck me, already.”

 

Jax makes a filthy sound and inserts a second finger, screwing both around, scissoring, until Dean is panting, legs trembling a little, and he’d be embarrassed but it feels so fucking good that he can’t do anything but say, “Jax,” in what he’ll later swear isn’t a begging tone.

 

Just like that, Jax’s fingers are gone and the blunt head of his cock replaces them, Jax whispering, “I’m going to fuck you ‘til you can’t walk out of here,” even as he shoves himself inside, pushing against the resistance.

 

Dean squirms, trying to get away or get him in, anything but the uncomfortable half-full sensation, and then Jax grunts, thrusting, and he’s seated, Dean suddenly rived apart, opened, too full, too much, too good.

 

Jax reaches around and that’s all it takes, one tug, two, and Dean is coming, throwing his head back so hard he feels its impact against Jax’s collarbone.

  
“Fuck, Dean, you’re so fucking—“ Jax groans, driven to incoherence by the punishing rhythm his need sets, and it’s all Dean can to do keep from having his damp dick sanded against the rough wood of the crate, Jax using all of his weight and strength now, bracketing Dean’s hips with his hands and pistoning into him.

 

“C’mon,” Dean urges.  “Fuck me, you motherfucking cocksucker.”

 

Jax shouts and spends himself with a broken litany of blasphemy and Dean’s name.

 

The first words Dean makes out are a breathy, “You’re such a romantic.”

 

“Suck me,” Dean answers, and Jax laughs, a low sound, a little throaty from all the shouting.  If Dean wasn’t thoroughly fucked out, his dick would jump at that laugh.

 

As it is, he manages to turn his head enough to meet Jax’s smirking lips with a wet, messy kiss.

 

He almost says something really cheesy.

 

Instead, he pushes back against Jax’s pinning weight, and Jax eases back far enough for Dean to shuffle backward and get to his pants.  He’s going to have spooge stains, but if that’s the cost of their afternoon delight, he’ll totally take it.

 

“So, you said something about lunch?”

 

Jax hadn’t, and they both know it, but Jax nods, finishes doing up his belt, and turns toward the door, retrieving his walkie as he asks, “You want to eat outside?”

 

“Hell, yeah,” Dean answers, considering idly, though not for the first time, what it would’ve been like if the last stand of God’s chosen had taken place in Anchorage.

 

Jax is pulling a green fabric Jetts’ bag from the Impala’s back seat, a smug smile on his face for having stashed it there without Dean noticing, when the low throb of a motorcycle engine cuts its way through their peace.

 

“Shit,” Jax says, setting the bag on the trunk and shading his eyes to see who’s coming.  Dean takes his place beside Jax and waits.

 

Chibs roars up, stops and idles, shouting over the grumble of his engine, “Juice.  St. Thomas.”

 

“Shit,” Jax says again, louder, exchanging a look with Dean before bolting for his bike.  He’s already backed her around and started her by the time Dean’s grabbed their forgotten lunch, tossed it in the back, and started the Impala.

 

The twelve minutes it takes them to get to St. Thomas seems interminable.  Dean spends it wondering what went wrong.  Juice and Chibs on their bikes, and Reno, their newest recruit, an ex-Raptor out of Albuquerque, driving the old Jeep 4x4 on a milk run to Fresno—milk, in this case, being liquor.  The Sons had made that run a dozen times, at least, without a problem.

 

Most of the infected fuckers seemed to have died out or headed elsewhere in the last couple of months.  The delegates had reported little by way of Freak activity on their cross-country rides, too. 

 

Can’t be Freaks.

 

Scavengers?

 

Last Dean had heard, the remnants of the army they’d routed had holed up in Salt Lake City to lick their wounds and spread venereal disease.

 

Accident?  
  


Dean pictures the kid’s face hashed to hamburger on the asphalt slide and immediately dismisses it.

  
No.

 

Finally, they arrive at the hospital, and Dean’s out of his car almost before Jax is off his bike.  They race into reception, Chibs trailing behind at a limp, and Dean spares a thought for the older man before Susan is saying, “Trauma.  Dr. Knowles is working on him.”

 

“Fuck,” Jax mutters, throwing, “What happened?” over his shoulder as he heads for the stairs.  Chibs, out of breath and visibly banged up, manages to say, “Crows,” before they’re through the double doors into the trauma ward, leaving him behind.

 

Through a glass observation window half-obscured by a curtain, Dean sees Juice stretched pale and bloody on a table, Tara working to intubate him as she rattles off instructions to the nurses, both of whom are maintaining the careful, neutral expressions of people who have seen it all and had their hands right in it.

 

From what Dean can tell, Juice has head trauma, a bloody gash across his forehead not as worrisome as the visible swelling he can see even from several feet away.

 

Tara gets the tube in, checks the monitors, nods to herself and catches them looking at her.  She doesn’t offer a smile or a head-shake, just returns to her work, and Dean has a sinking feeling that it’s too touch-and-go for her to make any judgments.

 

Jax must agree because he looses a string of profanity and then leans against the glass with both hands, bringing himself under control with obvious effort.

 

Dean turns at the sound of Chibs wheezing up beside them.

 

“You should see a doctor,” Dean says, and Chibs shrugs, then flinches like he wishes he hadn’t.

 

Jax gives him a look, and Chibs says, “We were maybe twenty miles out of Charming when a murder of crows came at us out of nowhere, divebombing us.  Juice swerved to avoid ‘em and his front tire caught the edge of the road, took ‘im over.  He tried to catch himself, but he hit pretty hard.”  He pauses, looking in at the controlled frenzy around the unconscious man.  “I didna think we’d make it this far.”

 

Chibs breaks off, but he doesn’t need to finish.  They’re all thinking the same thing.

 

Dean asks Jax without a word, and Jax nods, though the reluctance in his eyes belies the gesture. 

 

“I’ll clean up,” Dean says then, eyes already looking for a scrub sink.  He doesn’t usually need to be sterile to work the mojo; he hasn’t actually been at the bedside of a bleeding victim before.

 

He might not be ready for this—hell, probably isn’t.  But what choice does he have? 

 

Tara doesn’t even look up when Dean enters, just says, “Stay out of the way until I tell you.”

 

Dean holds his gloved hands out from his sides and waits, watching the numbers on the heart monitor fluctuate.  He’s no doctor, but Dean’s been around the hospital enough lately to have picked up a few things.  Juice’s blood pressure is low, his heart-beat sluggish.  He’s not breathing on his own—hence the tube and the humming machine to help him breathe.  He looks like he’s already dead.

 

“Head trauma,” Tara says, drawing Dean’s eyes to her.  “There’s swelling.  We’re probably going to have to drill.  Right now, we’re just trying to stabilize him enough to go in and shunt the pressure.  Both wrists are broken, but we can fix that later, after he’s out of immediate danger.  Dr. McCrory’s on his way in, and if we can get Juice stable, we’ll be prepping him for surgery.  If you’re going to help, now’s the time.”

 

Dean has to stop himself with a conscious effort from running his gloved hand over his mouth.    
  


“Right, okay,” he says, sounding more confident than he feels.  The nurse nearest him—Caitlyn, he thinks, or Cathy…something with a C, anyway—moves away to give Dean room beside the bed.

 

Up close, Juice looks like he’s already gone.  His skin has the blued paleness of frozen meat, except for his left cheek, pinpricked with embedded asphalt and bleeding sluggishly.  His left eye is swollen shut, his eyebrow split lengthwise, his nose crooked.

 

“Jesus,” Dean breathes, trying to steady his hands for the effort.  He’s grateful for the blood-speckled blue sheet that hides Juice’s torso.  What he can see of the kid’s shoulders is a purple field of bruises and abrasions.

 

He closes his eyes and tries to center himself, something he’s been learning—attempting to learn—from Melissa and Joan Weitz, who run the fitness/yoga/martial arts studio in Charming.  He’d resisted for a long time any efforts outside of his own, but after three weeks of futile struggle, he’d given in gracelessly to Jax’s suggestion that he try meditating or yoga or something.

 

“Fruits and nuts,” he’d muttered, but he’d gone to the studio for private sessions, and he _had_ learned something, he thought.

 

Of course, centering himself at the bedside of a sleeping flu patient is a hell of a lot different than trying to find his focus when it’s Juice under his hands, that beautiful face bloodied, the mechanical rise and fall of his chest a reminder that there’s a lot riding on Dean being able to do his thing.

 

Dean can’t explain what it feels like when he finds the right frequency—what he calls it in his head, for lack of better words.  There’s a humming in his blood, an energy just this side of uncomfortable.  His head fills with a kind of white noise, and he just…senses…the damage, what needs to be healed, and then he…does it.

 

Sometimes.

 

Not this time, though.  He tries; he really does.  He breathes like he’s been taught, “Into the core,” he imagines Melissa saying.  “Through the breath,” Joan’s voice echoes, as if from the bottom of a well.  And he finds it for second, the stillness before the rush of white noise that signals Dean’s tuning in.

 

Then the gentle blip-blip-blip of the heart monitor stutters, once, twice, Dean holding his breath waiting for it to recover.

 

It screams, instead, and he’s moving out of the way even as a hand on his arm shoves him none too gently aside.

 

He almost doesn’t want to look through the window at Jax, afraid to see his failure reflected in the other man’s eyes, but at last, Dean does, shaking his head a little, trying to show how sorry he is.

 

Jax isn’t even looking at him, eyes only for the kid and for the chaos of attempted resuscitation as Tara orders a hypodermic and one of the nurses jumps to retrieve it.

 

Dean lets himself out and slumps against the far wall, not wanting to see what comes next, eyes on the scuffed wax surface of the floor, ears on the two men watching the drama unfold.

He expects to hear cursing, to hear crushing grief in Jax’s blurt of words, and when that doesn’t come he at last looks up.

 

Jax is leaning against the window frame, hands above him, head hanging down, but it’s relief Dean sees in the line of his back, and in Chibs’ profile he can make out a weak smile.

 

Dean closes his eyes as his own wave of relief washes over him, weakening his knees.  He pushes off the wall and comes up between Jax and Chibs to look in the window.  Tara gives them a smile more grimace than grin, but it says what they most need to know, which is that Juice is hanging on.

 

“I’m sorry,” Dean starts, looking at a spot over Juice’s bed where a light fixture used to be.  Now it’s just a hole in the plaster spitting stripped wires. 

 

“Don’t,” Jax answers tersely, and while it might mean, “Don’t beat yourself up,” Dean thinks Jax is actually saying, “I can’t hear this now.”

 

Dean closes his mouth, breathes out of his nose, nods.  For something to say that isn’t another useless apology, Dean asks, “You got calls you want me to make?”

 

“Shit, yeah—Chibs, did you—?”  Jax turns to the other man.

 

“Aye.  I sent Reno ahead to the clubhouse after he dropped Juice off here, and Marcie radioed Opie from the wall.  He told me where he thought you’d be, said you were out of walkie range.”

 

Jax doesn’t seem surprised to hear that his second in command knew where he’d be, but Dean is, just a little.  He’d thought when Jax made a show of the walkie being blocked by the metal of the hut it meant that they were playing hooky for real.

 

 _Stupid._  

 

Jax doesn’t belong to Dean first or alone.  Dean had accepted that as the cost of loving the King of the World.  He just gets tired of the scrutiny, having spent his whole life heretofore avoiding it at all costs.

 

Jax had always been something of a spectacle, Dean guesses, giving Jax a considering look out of the corner of his eye.

 

Yeah, Jax is easy on the eyes, but more than that, he carries himself like he belongs on the throne, like there’s nothing he can’t handle and no one he can’t hurt if he has to.

 

It’s what makes him powerful and what keeps him in power.

  
It also puts space between them, something Dean tries not to think about too often. 

 

“Tara said they’re going to operate to relieve the pressure on Juice’s brain.  As soon as Dr. McCrory gets here and when Juice is stable, they’re taking him in to surgery.”

 

Jax nods, a jerky motion painful to watch.  Dean has to resist reaching out to cup the nape of Jax’s neck.  He gets the sense it wouldn’t be welcome.

 

“Chibs, you should get looked at,” Jax says.

“I’ll go with him,” Dean offers.  Unspoken is the part about being no good here anyway.

 

ER is on the opposite wing, and there should be at least one doctor on call.  They have four in the town, not counting Doc Urbanski, who’s eighty-five but still pretty steady-handed.  They reserve him for big emergencies.  The hospital typically has two on the floors at any given time.

 

They find Doctor Maartens tending to the sprained wrist of a teenager whose skateboarding skills are more enthusiasm than ability.  He greets Dean warmly; Dean’s knee is one of his best pieces of work, as the doctor is fond of noting.

 

Then his eyes do a cool assessment of Chibs’ face.  As he finishes wrapping the kid’s wrist he calls, “Wendy?”

 

A familiar face rounds the ubiquitous blue curtain and lights up when she sees Dean standing there.  “Hey,” she says, dimpling.

  
“Hey,” Dean answers, hugging her.  She turns to Chibs, takes in his condition, and clucks.  “Aw, honey, you come with me, and we’ll have you cleaned off and fixed up in no time.”

 

She throws Dean a wink on her way out the door, and he hears, “Come by for dinner sometime, Dean.  Chuck’d love to see you.”

 

Dean winces, remembering that it’s been weeks since he’s seen the ex-prophet and Wendy’s main squeeze. 

 

Doc Maartens admonishes the kid to be more careful and then turns to Dean.  “I heard about Juice.  I assume Ed is on his way?”

 

Dean nods.  Ed McCrory is the best neurologist in Charming, and not merely by virtue of the fact that he’s the only one.  He was board certified and award-winning even before the world wiped out his competition for the title.

 

“You okay?”

 

Dean looks up, a little startled at the Doc’s tone. “Yeah,” he answers slowly, a little confused.

 

“You look a little worse for wear.”

 

“Oh,” Dean falters, scrambling for an explanation that doesn’t sound lame and pathetic.  “Uh—“

 

“You heard about Demar?”

 

Dean’s heart is suddenly caught in his throat and he chokes on his own breath until his eyes water and he’s wheezing.

 

When he can talk again around the tightness in his throat, Dean says, “Is he—?”  But he can’t get the word out.  He’s so sick of death.

 

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to make you think—  Demar’s fine.  They released him earlier today.  His latest cell count was brilliant.  Doctor Addison thinks one more treatment ought to put him in remission.”

For the second time that day, Dean’s sucker-punched by relief.  This time, he manages not to sag, but it’s a near thing.

 

“His mother says you’re the one who saved him.  Addison isn’t inclined to agree, but then, you know her.”

 

Dean does know Doctor Addison, though he often wishes he didn’t.  Of all the medical personnel at St. Thomas, Anna Addison is the most skeptical—and vocal—about Dean’s healing “gifts,” and she makes no bones about not wanting him anywhere near her patients. 

 

Of which Demar was one.

 

Of course, fucking the King of the World confers on Dean certain consideration, and Addison had been voted down by the other physicians on staff.  This had not improved their relationship.

 

Dean shakes his head.  “I don’t know, Doc.  I didn’t think I was doing much of anything.”

 

“Well, there’s no other explanation, Dean.  Demar was a very sick little boy this morning, but his last panel came back almost clear.  That kind of thing doesn’t happen in a matter of hours, not without divine intervention.”

 

Dean laughs a little to cover his discomfort.  It’s bad enough having an on-again, off-again superpower that makes people look at him differently, but the ones who insist that he’s some kind of instrument of God especially unsettle him.

  
“Well, it’d help if the Big Guy would let me in on his timetable.”  He tries to make light of the fact that he has no control over his gift, hoping the Doc will let the subject drop.

 

Thankfully, he gets Dean’s hint.

 

“I’m going to check on your friend in there,” Doc says, nodding in the direction of another curtained cubicle. 

 

“Thanks, Doc.”

 

“No thanks necessary, Dean, you know that.  It’s my job.”

 

They shake hands, and Dean leaves the ER, heading back in the direction of the trauma unit, though only reluctantly so.  He doesn’t feel like he belongs there, even if he and Juice are pretty close.

 

Dean can’t put his finger on why this time should be different than any other time, but when he crosses into the waiting area and sees the whole club there, ranged on chairs or leaning against the wall, talking softly to each other, every body angled toward the big swinging doors behind which Juice is fighting for his life, Dean has a strange moment of clarity, seeing them from the outside for a rare change.

He’s not like them, never has been.  Sure, he can swear like a trucker and take as good as he gives, and hell, he’s been known to spoon out doses of violence with the best of ‘em.  Even Opie’s dislike has grown into a grudging respect in the last few months, ever since L.A.

 

But Dean doesn’t really belong, even now.  Maybe it’s the mojo making him different or the fact that he rose from the dead.  Resurrection isn’t exactly factory standard.

Maybe it’s that he and Jax are lovers, though none of the guys, not even the new ones, would ever make bones about it, and not just because Jax would react badly to that kind of ignorance.

 

No.  It’s that Dean makes Jax weak in a way a woman wouldn’t.  Old Ladies are meant to be helpmates, sure, and sometimes they can have a lot of influence.  Gemma sure as hell didn’t take shit from anyone, and no one who knew what was good for him ever crossed her.

 

But she wasn’t any man’s equal, no matter her status in the club.  Jax might dispute that, but Dean knows it’s so.

 

And Dean’s got a dick, which should make him a member of the club.  Except that what he does with that dick puts Jax in jeopardy, gives him one more thing he’s got to fight for and over.

 

Austin is a good example of the extra friction Dean brings to Jax’s life.

 

And maybe if it were just Dean and Jax, he’d be okay with that.  He’d say, “Fuck ‘em all,” and let the chips fall.

 

But as Dean has come to understand, Jax isn’t his; he belongs to Charming.  Jax can’t afford to be weak in any way, not with what the world’s got waiting for them all.

 

Dean sees that in Opie’s eyes sometimes, his understanding that what Dean and Jax have isn’t always what’s best for everyone, even if it does make Jax happy.

 

Opie nods now to Dean and pushes away from the wall he’d been holding up.

 

“Chibs?”

  
“Doc Maartens and Wendy have got him.  He’ll be okay.”

 

Opie nods. 

 

“You hear?” Dean asks, jerking his chin toward the trauma ward doors.

 

Opie nods again.  “McCrory got here a couple of minutes ago.”

 

They both look toward the doors as though they’re expecting an answer to issue forth.  When nothing happens for a span of seconds, Dean breathes out and turns toward a free chair between Sack and Bobby.

 

“Dean,” Opie says, his voice low, something in it making Dean tense up.  “You did what you could, man.”

 

Dean turns a surprised look on the big man and then grimaces and shrugs.  “Not enough.”

 

“Not your fault.”

 

From his tone, Dean can tell Opie means it, which is more than Dean can say for and of himself.  He forces out a, “Thanks,” that he hopes sounds sincere and then takes a seat.

 

After that, it’s mostly waiting, which Dean hates, and hoping, which he hates more.

It’s going to be a long night.

 

*****

 

 _A wise man once told me, “You can’t be sure of anything except that you’re breathing in and out.  Focus on that, and you’ll be okay.”  Some days, even breathing is a challenge.  But we keep doing it._ (Acts of the Sons 9:2-5)

 

Jax can still hear the machine that’s keeping Juice alive, despite that he’s sitting at a table in the blessedly quiet clubhouse.

 

It’s late.  Piney, Bobby, and the rest have gone to bed.  Ope had sent the delegates back to their rooms that afternoon with a word from Jax at the hospital.  Negotiations delayed due to…

 

 _A fucking nightmare_.

 

Jax guns back the shotglass full of amber whiskey that Juice might have died to bring back for them.  He should stop drinking.  His duties don’t end just because one of his orders might’ve gotten the kid killed.

 

Jax fills the glass and takes another shot.

 

The deliberate scuff of a boot on the worn linoleum floor alerts Jax that he’s no longer alone.  Dean can move with complete silence when he wants to, so Jax knows his lover is giving him a chance to say no.

 

Instead, he looks up, raises his empty glass to Dean and nods toward the bar, clearly indicating that he should get another glass and join Jax.

 

Dean skips the glass, sits at the table and sips from the bottle before plunking it down beside Jax’s hand.

 

“He’ll make it,” Dean says, and Jax snorts.  It isn’t Dean’s style to sugarcoat shit, so it’s an indication of just how bad things have gotten that Dean even tries in this case.

 

“He’s in a coma,” Jax answers, swigging back another shot.  “Probably won’t wake up.  Definitely brain damaged.”  Jax shakes his head, strikes the table with the empty glass, misjudging the distance to the tabletop.

 

He should stop drinking.

 

A long exhalation from Dean warns Jax of what’s coming next—more apologies, which he forestalls with a raised, if blurry, hand.  Jesus, he’s drunk.

 

“It’s not your fault, Dean.  You did what you could.  No one blames you.”

 

“Bullshit.”  Dean’s voice is rough and low, angry, at himself for sure, maybe at Jax.  “Sack couldn’t look at me, Piney could only glare, and Ope was fuckin’ nice to me.  They all blame me.”

 

“They’ll get over it.  It’s not your fault,” Jax repeats, insistent and slurred.

 

“You should get to bed,” Dean says in an obvious bid to change the subject or shut Jax up.

 

Jax considers the suggestion and then gives Dean a deliberate look.

 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Dean says.  “It’s four o’clock in the morning.  You have to be up at seven for the summit.  They’re coming here for breakfast, remember?”

_Shit._

 

Sighing, Jax pushes himself back from the table and tries to stand.  Only Dean’s hard grip around his elbow keeps him upright.

  
“You’re going to regret this in a few hours.”

 

“Fuck,” Jax groans, steadying himself, then, “Come to bed.”  He blames it on the whiskey that it sounds like he’s begging.

 

“Alright,” Dean answers, and Jax is more relieved than he should be.  They spend plenty of nights together.  “But you need to sleep.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Jax grouses, stumbling ahead of Dean down the hallway toward the bedroom they share.

 

He remembers toeing off his sneakers and climbing onto the bed, but whether Dean joins him or not, he doesn’t know.  He wakes to pounding at the door that matches the pounding in his head.  Groaning and squinting against the light, he says, “What?” and then swallows down his stomach’s attempt to climb up out of his throat.

 

“Up and at ‘em, sunshine,” Piney calls.  “Delegates’ll be here in ten.”

 

He doesn’t even have the energy to swear.  Instead, he uses the bathroom, swallows a handful of aspirin and two glasses of water, and slides into last night’s jeans and his last clean Sons tee-shirt.  His cut, hung neatly over a chair back, tells him Dean must’ve been about at some point.

 

“At the hospital,” Bobby explains when Jax asks him at the bar.  “Drink this,” he adds, shoving a murky concoction across the bar at Jax.

 

“What—?”

 

“You don’t want to know.  Drink.”

 

He’s choking over the first mouthful and trying to spit the taste of dead cat out of his mouth when Bobby laughs.  “Oh, and hold your nose.”

 

Jax offers a universal gesture and does as suggested, downing the rest with a lip-curling grimace.

 

“God, that shit is awful.  Jesus.  What’d you put in it, your ass sweat?”

 

“You wish,” Bobby answers, taking back the dirty glass. 

 

Whatever the so-called cure consisted of, it does the trick of settling his stomach and clearing his head. 

 

“Thanks,” he says, moving to the table, which J.C. is carefully setting with matching plates, silverware, and—

 

“Linen napkins?” he asks, incredulous.

  
J.C. offers her thousand watt smile.  “We borrowed them from Miriam.  She keeps them for town council brunches and stuff like that.”

 

Jax’s eyes catch Bobby’s and he smirks and shrugs. 

 

“Someone should make an honest old lady out of you, J.C.,” Jax says, pulling the sweetbutt against him for a hug and a sound kiss on the lips.

 

She swats at him, laughing, and steps away.  “Be careful, or I’ll have to tell Dean you’re stepping out.”

 

Jax knows she’s kidding, knows he should fire back something lewd about threesomes, but Dean’s absence, the way they left things the night before—hell, the last several weeks—strips away his sense of humor.

  
Still, he manages something because J.C. laughs again, a ringing, beautiful sound that ushers in the first of the delegates, Fallon and Three Rivers, and even he, Captain Lemonsucker, can’t help but smile to hear the sound of J.C.’s laughter.

 

“Make yourselves at home,” J.C. offers, setting a carafe of fresh-squeezed orange juice on the table.  Fallon’s eyes grow wide, and Jax does smile at that.

 

“We’ve got our own small grove, plus we make a run a couple times a year over to one of the big corporate groves in Bakersfield.”  
  


“If we had refrigerated hauling…” she starts, and Jax smiles, “We do.  We can negotiate OJ.”

 

That makes everyone except Three Rivers laugh.  Apparently, he’d filled his quota of humor for the day with his earlier smile.

 

Walt, Madge, and Montrose wander in next, and they’re all sampling the orange juice and complimenting the wonderful smell of Bobby’s cooking when the outer door swings open to let in the last, least welcome delegate.

  
Austin stalks into the room with an ugly look on his face, and the smiles and laughter trail off to nervous looks.

 

“You fucking cocksucker,” Austin barks, coming around the end of the table toward Jax, who’s standing with Fallon and Madge.

 

Jax puts his juice glass down with a lazy motion and meets the other man head on with a smirk.  “Guilty as charged,” he says, suggesting something with his eyes that turns Austin red in seconds.

 

Austin’s hands clench into fists, and out of the corner of his eye, Jax sees Bobby reaching for the scattergun under the bar.  He gives a minute shake of his head, and Bobby eases off.

 

“Besides what I like to do with my mouth, what’s your problem, Austin?” Jax asks, keeping his voice casual, like they’re talking about suspension on a soft-tail.

 

“You’ve been holding out on us, Teller.  You’ve got a fuckin’ stockpile of surplus weapons not on the inventory.”  Austin punctuates his statement by throwing the inventory binder onto the table.  It skitters across the surface, knocking a place setting to the floor.  Plate and glass shatter, silverware raining in a tinkling shower.

 

“Hey!” Bobby calls, gun up and aimed steadily at Austin.  “There’s no call for that nonsense.  Clean it up.”

 

“Like hell I will,” Austin growls.  “I’m not the one who made this mess—you are!” He pokes at Jax with one stiff finger. 

 

“So much for no weapons at the summit,” Three Rivers says, aiming a significant look at Bobby.

 

“This is our clubhouse, shithead,” Jax says to Austin, though he’s answering Three Rivers’ complaint.  “We don’t take a piss without a gun at hand.  Had no plans to use one here, though, if it hadn’t been for the asshole.”

 

Jax takes his eyes from Austin then, long enough to level Three Rivers a look.  The dour man twists his lips but nods his acknowledgement of Jax’s point.

 

“Clean it up,” Madge says to Austin, maternal steel in her voice.  “Then we’ll all sit down to a good breakfast and figure this shit out.”

 

The distraction of eating gives Jax time to try to figure a way around the latest problem Austin’s revelation has caused.  He tries not to waste time in thinking about who ratted them out.  Plenty of people know about the stockpile, including every Son and most of Charming’s Army, not to mention Hale and the civil police, so the fact of a leak isn’t all that shocking.

  
What’s disturbing is that someone in Charming is cozying up with Austin.  It’s got “coup attempt” written all over it, and he’s going to have to get Opie on it.  And check with Sack to see who was watching the delegates last night, find out from him who Austin talked to.

  
Meanwhile, though, Jax has to hit on a diplomatic way to explain the holdout about the weapons in that Quonset hut.

 

When everyone’s groaning with over-eating, sipping a third or fourth cup of homegrown coffee and watching J.C. clear the table, her usual sunny smile somewhat strained but holding, Jax says, “Way I see it, we’ve all got a right to secrets.  My first responsibility is to protect this town and my people, and given how often we’ve been a target of one threat or another, it makes sense that we have the weapons to do that.”

 

Austin starts to protest, but Jax talks right over him.  “I’m not saying it’s right that I lied to you, but I’m not apologizing, either.  We don’t know each other well enough for trust just yet.  Case in point’s sitting right here at this table.”

 

Jax knocks on the tabletop for emphasis and very deliberately doesn’t look at Austin.

 

Another huff of air warns of the coming blow, but Madge cuts Austin off this time.  “Jax has a point.  It’s bad manners to spy on your host.”

 

“But he’s got—“

 

“You’d have been better off keeping it to yourself, going to one delegate and then the next with it, getting them all on your side.  Doin’ it this way makes you look guilty of something.”  Jax shrugs into his butter-wouldn’t-melt expression and doesn’t look at Austin.

 

He’s watching the other delegates for signs which side they’ll come down on.  _There_.  Three Rivers can’t look at Jax, and he knows Austin had been talking out of school.  Fallon looks thunderous, Montrose queasy.

 

Madge wouldn’t have been stupid enough to let Austin talk if she’d known about the weapons cache before hand.

 

Walt’s face is carefully expressionless.  Jax bets he’s a great poker player.

 

“Fact is, I’m not lookin’ to wage war on any of you.  Leaving aside the logistics of getting our asses over to you hauling a lot of heavy firepower, I’d have to ask what the point is.  Charming’s got everything we need, including the one thing none of you have.”  He leaves it unspoken; none of them are likely to forget Las Cruces’ excruciating final moment any time soon.  “We should be focusing on what we can do for each other to make the world better for everyone in it, not fighting about who’s got the biggest dick.”

 

Fallon barks a short, sharp laugh and Madge smirks.  Three Rivers puckers like he found a lemon in his coffee.

 

“I see your point, Jax, but I do have to ask what you hoped to gain by secrecy.”  Walt’s even tone is grave.

 

“Good question,” Madge seconds.

 

Jax offers another casual shrug, though his spine feels like it’s been welded upright, the muscles of his back bunched and tense.  “You tellin’ me none of you have secrets you’re keeping?  I find that hard to believe.  Since when did a confederacy mean giving up our individual rights to govern?  Anyway, even with a stockpile on the side, Charming’s still offered more weapons than all the rest of you combined.”

 

“How do we know you aren’t going to use those weapons to coerce us into buying more from you?”  Three Rivers seems to have gotten over his temporary reticence.

 

“You don’t.  But again, what leverage do we really have that isn’t going to cost us in time and manpower?  You know how much gas we’d use up driving a convoy to Fallon, never mind Austin?  And for what?  A few more bottles of whiskey?  Some sedatives?  That’s shit we can get right here for a lot less effort than waging war would cost.”

 

“So we just trust to your sense of economy?”  Three Rivers’ voice is dry enough to suck empty a sea.

 

“Trust or don’t trust.  I’m not giving up those weapons.  You don’t like it, there’s the door.”

 

“What makes you so fucking special?”  Austin finally loses what little control he had over his temper.  There’s foam at the edge of his lips and his face is so red, Jax is convinced he’s going to stroke out.

 

Wishful thinking.

“You aren’t any better than the rest of us, and I don’t care if you do think you have God on your side.  You’re just a fucking pillowbiter with a big mouth and a limp dick.  If we wanted to, we could take over this town, take whatever the fuck we wanted from you.  The whole point of a confederacy, douchebag, is to protect each other from people like you.”  He stops, probably only to regain breath for more shouting, but Jax’s dangerously quiet voice cuts through his bluster.

 

“People like me?”

 

“Fags,” Austin explains, like Jax is just a little slow.

 

“So all of this shit about the weapons is really just a smokescreen for your real problem with me, which is where I put my dick?”

 

Madge stifles a laugh, but Three Rivers shifts uncomfortably in his chair, and Walt’s neutral expression has grown stony.

 

“Seriously?”  And if he sounds pissed, that’s good because he is.

 

“The world came to an end, we’re the last people left standing, and we’re going to fight over things that are none of your fucking business to begin with?  You bring personal shit to the negotiating table and think it’s okay?  This is _my_ house.  _My_ town.  You don’t like the way I live my life, you can get the fuck out.  But don’t expect that we’re going to rush to your rescue when you need us.  And don’t think we’re afraid of you coming at us because I can tell you, there isn’t anything we haven’t already seen.  We put down the fucking devil, or did you forget?  What do you think Austin, Texas, can possibly put up that’s worse than that?”

 

While Austin is coming up with a response other than furious sputtering, Jax lowers his voice to the lethal register that means he’s done dealing with fuckheads.

 

“And for the record, asshole, you and everyone at this table and everyone alive back home in your towns owe your lives to Dean Winchester, who killed the devil, died for it, rose from the dead, and right now is at St. Thomas hospital healing the sick with the power God gave him.  And when he’s done with that, he’s going to come back here, and we’re going to celebrate his God-given gifts with a good hard fuck.  Maybe right here on this table.”

 

Fallon snorts, but Montrose picks his hands up off the tablecloth like maybe there’s something sticky on it.

 

“Now,” Jax finishes, tone light and reasonable.  “Are we going to talk about food exchanges?”

 

It’s well after dinnertime when the summit finally breaks for the night, and when he follows the last of the delegates out to the parking lot, he’s surprised to find it still sunny, the long summer’s day extending its yellow fingers across the parking lot. 

 

Sack is working on a bike near the first garage bay, and Jax wanders over.  “Any word?”

 

The kid doesn’t have to ask what Jax is talking about, shakes his head regretfully as he wipes his forehead with the back of one greasy, wrench-wielding hand.  “Tara says there’s no change.”

 

“Dean around?”

Sack shrugs.  “I don’t know.  He was at the hospital last I heard, but that was awhile ago.”

 

They’re drawn from the desultory small-talk that follows by the sound of a bike coming up the drive.  Opie backs her in and dismounts, slinging his helmet over the handlebar.

 

“Hey,” Jax says, leaving the kid to his work.  “What’s up?”

 

“Heard you had an interesting time of it this morning?”

 

Damn Bobby anyway.  Total gossip whore.

 

“Yeah, nothin’ I couldn’t handle.”  
  
Ope snorts his opinion of that.  “Still, wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more diplomatic.”

 

“Whatever.  You seen Dean?”

 

“He’s not with you?”  Ope seems surprised, and that raises the hair on Jax’s neck.

 

It’s ridiculous.  What harm could come of Dean in Charming?

 

“Nah.  Sack said he was at the hospital earlier.”

 

“He was,” Ope confirms.  “Worked on Juice for two hours, came out when Bobby showed up to report on this morning, then left without a word.  I assumed he came back here to crash.  Looked like shit.”

 

“Fuck.”

 

“Check the Reservoir,” Ope suggests.  “Or the Hostel.  Don’t think he’s seen the kid in more’n a week.”

 

“The kid” is Sam, twelve going on twenty-five, smart-assed, fast of foot, and devoted to Dean, though neither of them would admit it even under torture.

 

Despite his relative youth, he lives at the Hostel, the youngest resident by six years.  He fits in just fine.

 

Jax could just get on the horn, use the landline and the walkies to track Dean down, but he doesn’t like to do that if it’s not an emergency.  They try to keep their private life separate from their public one.

 

Of course, lately, there’s not much difference.

 

As he’s heading for his own bike, Ope calls, “Don’t forget supper.  Seven o’clock.  Rita’ll kill me if you don’t show.  Then she’ll kill you.”

 

Jax sketches a wave and tosses a smirk over his shoulder.  “I’ll be there.”

 

“Bring Dean,” Ope shouts as Jax starts his bike and pulls away.  Another wave.  He’ll bring Dean, assuming he can find him.

 

He tries the Hostel first, and it pays off.  The Impala is parked across three spaces, its sleek, black lines keeping at bay a hybrid beater on one side and a string of pastel mopeds lined up like a broken candy necklace to the other.

 

Inside, there’s noise from the kitchen—pots clanging, water running, voices raised in mockery.  It’s good to be young.

  
Jax pauses in the doorway to take in the sight of Dean, hip against one end of the counter, can of soda in left hand, and with his right describing something to Sam, who’s wearing a smile that says he’s sassing Dean’s every third word.

 

He feels his heart stutter in his chest at how beautiful Dean looks, relaxed like that, unaware that he’s being watched, obviously at home with the Hostel kids, with whom Dean’s been spending a lot of time since Sam moved there a few months back.

 

Jax would never call Dean beautiful to his face—words like that are for pussies—but he feels it in his chest, heat spreading up his throat, like it’ll burst from him in embarrassing words if he can’t let it out some other way.  Suddenly, his hands itch, and he’s restless to be on the road.  It’s not only that he wants Dean—he wants Dean all the time, at the most inappropriate times, in fact—but that he loves him.

 

Loves him and wants him alone for five minutes so he can show him.

 

“Hey,” Dean says, sensing someone watching and looking up, surprise and delight flitting across his face.  “You done for the day?”

 

Jax smiles and comes into the kitchen, answers the kids’ enthusiastic greetings, all except D.J., who’s only enthusiastic about scowling, which he does with a champion’s focus.

 

Of course, it could be in this case because Dean’s there—Dean, who’d taught Sam a few street-fighting moves that had made D.J. cry like a baby the last time he’d tried to lay a hand on Sam.  It had unmanned D.J.—literally and figuratively—and he hadn’t recovered any street cred since.

 

Stacy interrupts Jax’s consideration of D.J.’s expression by asking him to stay for dinner, Darlene shyly seconding the request.

 

With some regret, he has to say no.  “We already have a dinner invitation at Opie and Rita’s.”

 

Lou laughs, “Don’t keep her waiting.”  Ope’s old lady’s reputation precedes her even here.

 

Jax smirks wryly and says, “No way.”

 

Dean shoves off from the counter, handing something to Sam and talking low in his ear.  The kid grins and nods, races out of the kitchen toward the front door.

 

Jax’s eyebrow earns an explanation from Dean.  “Told him he could borrow my throwing knives if he promised to let Lou supervise. He’s getting them from the trunk.”

 

Lou gives a grave tilt of his chin, acknowledging the responsibility, and Dean shakes his hand.

 

They pass Sam on the way back in, walking with a swagger that looks a little too familiar to be accidental.  After Dean warns Sam again about knife safety, earning an impatient, “I _know_ , Dean!” they part ways.

 

At his bike, Jax says, “Knives, huh?”

 

Dean’s one-shouldered shrug is studied-casual.  “I figure he’s already learning hand-to-hand.  Can’t hurt to have another skill set.”

 

Jax briefly considers the kind of world they live in now, a world where a kid’s natural skill-set includes knife-throwing.  It makes him smile a little, until he remembers that Dean’s childhood included the same training, and that was without the Apocalypse as an excuse.

 

Moments like these, Jax remembers that he doesn’t know Dean all that well, that big parts of him are hidden still and might be so forever.  Dean doesn’t like to talk about his past, especially not the parts including Sam.  His Sam.  Jax can’t blame him, and he doesn’t try.  But it makes him uncomfortable, the unknown that puts distance between them.

 

“We going or what?”  
  


Dean’s leaning against the roof on the driver’s side of the Impala, wrists against the frame, keys in one hand.  He’s got a curious look on his face, but Jax knows he won’t ask.

 

Dean’s good that way.

 

Sometimes, Jax wishes Dean weren’t so good.  Sometimes, he wants to be pushed. 

 

This time, though, they’re running late for Ope and Rita’s, and Jax doesn’t want to think about what Rita will do to them if they ruin dinner by being late.

 

As it happens, they’re just in time, the bottle of wine Dean mysteriously produces from the Impala’s back seat smoothing over any sharp comments Rita might be inclined to make.

 

As usual, Ope is amused and quiet, greeting Jax warmly and Dean with a reserved warmth, too, that Jax notices happily. 

 

“Where’s Ellie?” Dean asks as they tuck in to roast chicken, Greek potatoes, salad, and fresh bread.

 

“She’s staying at her friend Nancy’s house,” Rita explains.  “Nancy moved in catty-corner to us about three months ago, was it, Ope?”

 

Ope grunts an affirmative, mouth full of buttered bread.

 

“Anyway, they’ve hit it off, and we like Nancy’s mom, so…”

 

“That’s great,” Jax enthuses, meaning it.  There was a time after Donna and Kenny died that Jax wasn’t sure Opie would survive, never mind find a new life with someone else. 

 

Talk veers around business for a long time, avoiding anything touching on town council concerns, the summit talks, or Dean’s newest skill.  They can’t avoid the inevitable, though, and spend some solemn quiet thinking about Juice when Opie finally reports, “Tara says there’s no change.”

Jax watches Dean’s face go blank, sees him put his fork down and sit back in his chair.  Ope must notice, too, because he gives Jax an apologetic look.  Jax shrugs minutely, as if to say, _Can’t be helped_.

 

And it can’t.

 

Life intrudes, no matter how good the company.

 

“No one blames you,” Rita says suddenly, and Jax stiffens, sees tightness in Ope’s and Dean’s faces, too.  “No one expects you to work miracles, Dean.  You’re only human.  You have to be good to yourself, you know?  And take care of each other.”  She says this with a little nod in Jax’s direction.

 

No one argues with Rita who knows what’s good for him, and Dean’s no fool, but Jax can almost see the struggle Dean’s having to keep quiet.

 

He settles on a raspy, “Thank you,” that must hurt coming out of his tight throat.  Then he drops his chin in what might be a nod but could be an involuntary flinch at a painful swallow.

 

As Jax watches, Dean shakes it off, manages a smile—maybe not Hollywood style, but good enough for porn—and says, “So, do you have any of that famous pie of yours?”

 

“You offering to scrape the plates?”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean answers, promptly standing to gather their dirty plates and follow Rita to the kitchen.

 

During the brief time they’re gone, Jax fills Ope in on what happened after Bobby left the summit for the hospital.

 

“But Austin checks out?”

 

“Yeah,” Jax answers, nodding.  “Peri called up Austin, got their radio guy on the line.  He described their delegate, and it’s the asshole, alright.  Peri said the radio guy seemed kind of ‘sheepish’ about it, though, like maybe he suspected why we were asking.”

 

Ope grunts.  “Probably glad to get rid of him.”

 

Jax laughs a little at that.

 

“Something going on between you and Dean?” Ope asks out of nowhere.

 

“What’re you, Dr. Phil?”

 

“Fuck you,” Ope answers through a smile.

 

“We’re fine, Ope.  Just tired and stressed, I guess.”

 

Ope nods.  “You’ve got a lot going on, both of you.”

 

“Yeah.”  There’s something wistful in his tone he can’t quite get rid of.  “But hey, how long can this summit last, anyway?”

 

“Who’s having pie?” Dean asks heartily from the door to the dining room.

 

That effectively ends the serious talk for another few minutes.  Mostly, they sigh happily and ask for seconds.  Rita’s wicked with apples and butter.

 

It’s Jax’s turn to help with clean-up, and he accompanies Rita to the kitchen with the dirty dessert plates, leaving Dean at the table with Ope.  Once, not too long ago, that would have made him nervous, but since L.A., the two seem to have come to an understanding.  At least, they get along in front of him.  What goes on when he’s not there is another story.

 

Jax gets a look at that, though, when he comes back for the forgotten pie tin.

 

Dean and Ope are standing near the window that looks out over Ope and Rita’s little back yard.  They’re talking, not so low as to be secretive but quietly.

 

Ope sees Jax first, indicates his presence to Dean, but Dean doesn’t startle.  The face he turns to Jax is serious, eyes hooded, and Jax feels something like nerves stir the mess of pie and chicken in his belly.

 

“What?”

 

“I was just asking Ope if there were any houses available in this neighborhood.  You know—close to the clubhouse, not too big, decent-sized yards.”  Dean nods out the window as if to support his question.

 

“You thinking of moving out?” Jax asks, voice light, going with the joke.

 

But Dean’s face is grave, and Jax feels his stomach turn again.  “Are you serious?  You want us to move out of the clubhouse?”  He can feel pressure rising in his chest, feel heat in his face.  He’s a little angry, yeah, but mostly surprised and more than a little hurt.  He had no idea Dean was unhappy with their living arrangements.  He wonders how much else he’s missed lately.

 

“Can we talk about this later?”  Dean asks, and Jax has to squelch his first urge, which is to shout, “No!  We fucking well can’t!  You already talked to Ope about it, so you can talk to me right the fuck now.”

 

Instead, he manages a stiff nod and a stilted, “Sure.”  He takes a breath and gives his second-in-command another nod.  “Ope?”

 

Opie, who’d taken a few steps across the dining room to give them some privacy, comes back with his ubiquitous clipboard.

 

Flipping through the pages, he pauses now and then to read an entry more closely, finally settling on one several sheets in.

 

“I’ve got a place over on Tupper—that’s the next street south of here.  Two bedrooms, living room, breakfast nook.  No dining room.  One and a half bathrooms.  It needs some work.”  Ope gives him a considering smirk.  “Think you can handle drywalling, princess?  You might break a nail.”

 

Dean snorts and gives him the finger.

 

The light exchange between his best friend and his lover would ordinarily ease Jax’s tension rather than the opposite, but tonight it makes him angry that they’re thick as thieves, like Ope doing his job is somehow betraying Jax. 

 

He knows it’s stupid, but he can’t help it.

 

“I’ve gotta go,” he says shortly, turning from the two to stalk to the kitchen doorway, lean his head in, say, “Hey, Rita, thanks for the great meal.”

 

Rita looks up with a surprised expression from where she’s bent over the counter wrapping the leftovers.

 

“Leaving already?  Something wrong?”

 

“No, sweetheart.  Just the usual duties.”

 

“Heavy lies the head that wears the crown,” Rita answers, and Jax starts, which wrings a crowing laugh out of the woman. 

 

“What, I’m not supposed to know any Shakespeare?  My father used to say that all the time when he’d come home from work.  He was the head of a construction company.”

 

Jax forgets sometimes that everyone has a history, that people bring their pasts with them.  He knows nothing at all about Rita; she’d shown up about six months after the first wave of horrors had hit, made sweetbutt in two days time, and worked her way into Opie’s heart pretty efficiently thereafter.

 

As far as Jax is concerned, Rita didn’t have a life before the Sons.

 

He’s a fool to forget that history matters.

 

Wondering if maybe that’s some of what’s going on with Dean—the history Jax has discounted or that Dean has refused to share—he softens his smirk to say, “He sounds like a cool guy.”

 

Rita’s eyes go a little misty, and since she’s never been the kind of woman Jax would call “soft,” it makes him sad.  “My dad was great,” she answers eventually, turning her back to him to briskly polish the already gleaming countertop.  “It was my mother who fucked it all up.”

 

“Anyway,” she says, overloud, after another minute of furious wiping.  “Take some of these leftovers, will ya?  You can use it for your next picnic.”  More suggestive than suggestion, Rita’s sly tone sets the two of them back in their normal place.

 

“Thanks, babe,” he says, taking the bag from her and dropping a kiss on her cheek.

 

“Hey,” Rita says, stopping him with damp hands on his shoulders.  “Take care of Dean, huh?”

 

Jax searches her eyes, finds worry there, nods mutely, swallowing past a sudden fear that clogs his throat.  “I will,” he promises, not sure it’s one he can keep.  Too much seems to be happening all at once.

 

At last, he’s free of her, nodding to Ope as he breezes through the dining room, heading for the front hallway and the freedom of his bike beyond.  Dean hasn’t moved from his place by the window, and Jax gives him a smile as he stalls near the hallway door.  “See you back at the clubhouse?”

 

Dean says, “Yeah, I’ll be there in a few.”

 

“I’ll wait.”  Forever, he wants to add, but that seems stupid and girly.  _What the fuck?_

 

Feeling like he took a wrong turn and ended up outside the bounds of any place he understands, Jax leaves the leftovers on the Impala’s hood, knowing Dean will bring them, and climbs onto his bike, backing her around, starting her, heading out of the driveway with a roar.  The neighborhood is dark, night broken only by the occasional candle-lamp on a porch rail here or a propane lantern in a window there.  They save electricity wherever they can, rationing it like water and gasoline, trying to stretch their resources, supplement their stockpiles so that no one starves or has to live alone in the dark.

 

No one except him, that is.

 

“Fuck!” he shouts aloud, taking a corner too fast, reckless and breathing hard.  _Fuck this shit_ , he thinks to himself, gunning the engine, opening her up into speeds unsafe for residential streets.

 

At last he slows, panting and windblown, to pull into the clubhouse lot and park her.  By the time he climbs off, he’s calmed down and gotten over himself.

 

He and Dean are fine, and he intends to prove it to Dean just as soon as his lover gets home.

 

_Home._

 

*****

 

 _The hardest sacrifices are the ones that don’t cost you everything._ (Acts of the Sons 10:2)

 

Dean can hear the engine of Jax’s bike ticking as it cools, so he knows Jax can’t be too far ahead of him, but he’s reluctant enough for the coming conversation to hope that the guy is three shots into a long night of drinking.

 

_Coward._

 

The voice sounds suspiciously like his father’s.

 

There’d be irony in it, given John’s proclivity for keeping secrets—and drinking, for that matter—if it weren’t for the fact that the voice is right.

 

Squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath, Dean crosses the parking lot, gravel crunching under his boots, and opens the clubhouse door.

 

With the girls sleeping at the Hostel and Piney and Bobby already in bed, the big place is quiet, almost echoing with Jax’s tired sigh, which Dean can hear from halfway down the hall.

 

“You want a beer to go with that?” Dean asks, looking at the table in front of Jax, where he’s got two empty shot-glasses and a bottle of whiskey.

 

Jax smirks.  “I don’t know, do I?”

 

Dean considers.  “No.”

 

Dean sits next to Jax, at right angles to him so that neither has his back to the door.  Jax shoves a glass to him, pours them each a shot, raises his glass in a mock toast.  “To complications.”

 

Dean nods, clinks glasses, guns it.  Jax does the same.

 

“So, you movin’ out on me, Dean?”

 

Dean shakes his head.  He’d had some time to think about how to say this so it doesn’t come off wrong, but now that they’re at the edge of it, he’s pretty sure he’s going to fuck it up, freefall down a deep hole he’s dug for himself.

 

Still, he’s got to try to make Jax see that it’s not leaving, just moving.

 

“I was kind of hoping we could both move out, Jax.”

 

“Why?” 

 

Dean can’t tell from Jax’s tone just how angry his lover is, but he’s got a pretty good idea why he’s pissed.

 

“I know this seems like I’ve been keeping something from you, like I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, but I haven’t, Jax.  I just think—some things have come to my—Shit.”

 

Dean sits back and wipes a hand over his face, touches the edge of his shot-glass by way of asking for another.  Jax obliges with short, sharp movements, splashing amber around the edge of the glass and onto Dean’s hand.

 

He’s tempted to lick it away, to derail the conversation in their usual fashion, with a healthy dose of lust.  Jax’s eyes are expectant, and Dean hates to disappoint him, but he does, wiping the hand against his jeans and sipping the whiskey before setting down the half-full glass.

 

“We need a place that isn’t your throne-room.”

 

Jax makes an impatient noise and shifts in his seat.  
  
“Look,” Dean rushes to add, “I know this is your home.  I know this is where your brothers come, I get that.  I know the sweetbutts live here, and Bobby and Piney and Half-Sack.  But hell, Jax, Ope’s got Rita, Juice is livin’ on his own, Chibs and Mouse got a place.  Why shouldn’t we have a house?  Didn’t your mom and Clay have their own house?”

 

“That was different, Dean.”

 

“How?  How was it different?”  Dean isn’t trying to start anything, doesn’t want to rub open old wounds.  He just wants to understand why Jax is against this.

 

“It wasn’t the fucking apocalypse, for one thing.”

 

Fair enough, except—

 

“The apocalypse is over, Jax.  It’s a brave new world.”  Dean’s irony isn’t lost on Jax, who makes a bitter sound and guns another shot.

 

“I belong here, Dean.  This is… People need to know where they can find me.”

 

“That’s bullshit, Jax.  It’s not like they couldn’t find Tupper Street.  Or wherever,” he adds hastily, seeing Jax’s next protest and cutting him off.  “We can live wherever you want, Jax, just…not here.”

 

“This is my home, Dean.  I thought it was yours.”  Dean can hear the hurt in Jax’s voice, the anger and surprise taking a distant place and show to the winner, which is apparent in his eyes, too, hooded as they are against Dean’s scrutiny.

 

He hates that he’s put that guarded look on Jax’s face, but it’s got to be done.

 

“This _was_ my home, Jax.  For awhile.  At first, when I didn’t have, hadn’t had anyplace for a long time except the Impala.  And then after—when I left Sari’s.  And it’s not that I’m not grateful, Jax, I—“

 

“Jesus, will you shut up, Dean!  You act like you’re some kind of fucking charity case, like I took you in because I felt sorry for you.  You’re my fucking lover, Dean.  You belong here with me.  This is your home as much as it is mine.”

 

“No,” Dean says, and he puts the steel of his conviction into his voice because he feels this and he wants Jax to know it.  “No, it’s not my home.  It’s yours, and I’m always welcome because I’m yours too, I guess.  The King’s Consort.  Jax Teller’s gay lover.  Whatever.  But this isn’t my home, Jax.  Hell, I’m not even a Son.”

 

Jax starts at that and gives Dean a hard look.  “Yes you are.  Don’t pull that shit. You’re as much a Son as Ope or Chibs, or hell, Piney.  Just ‘cause you don’t have the cut doesn’t mean—“

 

“And why is that?”  Dean’s question is quiet, the deadly kind of quiet that indicates real danger.

  
Jax, frustrated, shoves back in his chair, dragging the legs across the linoleum until they squeal. 

 

“C’mon, man.  You know you’re a member.  You sit in on meetings.  You help us make decisions.  You—“

 

“I don’t have a vote.”

 

Jax stares at the table, rubbing at an invisible spot with his thumbnail.

 

“Jax, this place belongs to the Sons.  It’s your clubhouse.  And I’m not an actual member of the club.  And that’s okay—I’m not really—this isn’t really about that.”

 

“Then what the fuck _is_ it about?”  Jax’s voice rises, rage making it tight and rough.

 

“It’s about guys like Austin.  It’s about the Reverend Rounder and his kind.  It’s about what people think when they come from other places to meet with the King of Charming, God’s Chosen.  We have to be careful, Jax.  We have to think about how you present yourself.  Having your gay lover at hand, the room where you fuck him not twenty-five feet from the meeting table—that sends a message that maybe you don’t want to send.”

 

“You saying you’re ashamed of us?”  It’s Jax’s turn for lethal calm.  Dean recognizes it, but he doesn’t back down.  Jax has to understand, be made to understand.  This isn’t about Jax and Dean; it’s bigger than either of them.  Always has been.

 

He says as much, Jax shaking his head halfway through the explanation, hand striking the table to silence Dean before he can finish.

 

“I don’t give a fuck what people think.  They don’t like us, that’s too goddamn bad.  I’ve never asked for anyone’s permission or approval, and I’m not going to start now.  I didn’t think you cared about other people’s opinions, either, Dean.  What’s changed?”

 

“ _We’ve_ changed, Jax. _You’ve_ changed.  You’ve got…fuck, Jax, you’ve got delegates from all over the country, maybe even the world, coming here.  It _is_ a brave new world, Jax, and you’re its leader.” 

 

“I’m its gay leader, Dean.  And I don’t care what anyone thinks about that.  They don’t like it, they can suck my dick.”

 

“I hope not.”  Dean tries for the joke, but it falls flat in the dead quiet of the tense air.  “Look,” he says again, wearily.  “I’m not suggesting we…stop seeing each other.  I don’t want that.  I want you.  I think I’ll always want you.  And you know I—,” he struggles to finish the sentence, fails, sees by Jax’s eyes that the other man understands despite Dean’s inability to voice the feeling.

Sighing, tired to his marrow, Dean continues, “I just think it’d be a good idea for us to have a place of our own.  I’d think you’d want that. We’d have more privacy, for one thing.”

 

“Seriously, Dean, what brought this on?  I thought we were fine.  I thought—“

 

“We are.  Fine.  Okay?  We’re fine.  I don’t—  I’m not trying to—  I just think it’s better for you if I—or we—live somewhere else.”

 

“No.” 

 

Dean’s heard that definitive tone often enough to recognize it for the won’t-budge, won’t-back-down message it’s sending.  He’s just not used to being on the receiving end of it. They don’t fight.

 

Or not often, anyway.

 

“You can’t make me stay, Jax.  This is best for both of us.  You know it.  You’re just being stubborn because I surprised you and you’re hurt.  I get it.  But that doesn’t change that I’m moving.  You want me out of here tonight?”

 

Jax shakes his head, muscle in his jaw ticking as he clenches his teeth.  Dean can see his lover marshaling himself, trying not to throw the shot-glass or lunge from his seat and come at Dean.  Dean’s waiting, deceptively at ease in his seat.

 

At last, Jax’s hand uncurls from the empty glass, reaches for the bottle, pours another, tilting the bottle mouth toward Dean in silent offer.

  
Dean says, “No thanks.”

 

Jax puts the bottle down a little sharply, the rap gun-shot loud in the tight silence.  He looks at the liquid in his glass, not at Dean, as he downs the whiskey, closing his eyes against the burn.

 

Dean watches Jax’s throat bob in the swallow, feels a surge of unexpected lust blooming low in his belly.  He swallows, too, and considers the probability of angry sex.

 

“Jax—“ he starts, but Jax cuts him off.    
  


“Don’t, Dean.  I can’t—  I’m done talking for the day.  Just…go to bed.”

 

That answers Dean’s unspoken question.  It’s clear Jax is getting cozy with the bottle tonight, not Dean. 

 

Nodding, Dean rises, steps away from the table, stopping beside Jax and dropping a hesitant hand on his shoulder.  He leaves it there, half expecting Jax to shrug it off, but when he takes it, Dean squeezes, leans down, whispers words into Jax’s ear that he always means but can rarely manage aloud.

 

Somehow it’s different if they aren’t audible in the air of the room, if only Jax hears them. 

 

Under his hand, Jax shivers.

 

Dean straightens and takes his hand away, wondering when he’ll be allowed to touch Jax like that again, or when he’ll be able to breathe private words into his ear.  He hopes it’ll be soon and not never.

Pinning all his hopes on a future he can’t see clearly and never trusts anyway, Dean strips out of his clothes and falls into bed, asleep in minutes despite the tension in his bones.

 

What dreams follow him down into the dark are his alone. 

 

When he wakes the next morning, crumb-eyed and muzzy-headed, Jax is nowhere to be found, certainly not in the room, but not in the clubhouse or garage bays, either.

 

Dean heads for the roof, expecting to see Jax lingering over a spliff and staring out at the morning sky, eyes on some distant thing Dean can never quite catch.

 

The roof is empty.

 

With a heavy feeling in his stomach, he climbs back down, heads inside, stopping to chat briefly with Bobby, who’s brewing coffee and getting ready to fix breakfast for Sack and Kerry, who spent the night.

 

“The kid gettin’ serious?” Dean asks, sipping Bobby’s superb, strong blend, missing it already, even as he swallows the too-hot coffee.

 

Bobby shrugs and grouses, “It’s a fuckin’ contagion.  You and Jax, Ope and Rita, Chibs and Mouse.”

 

“Just means it’s up to me and you to keep chasin’ tail,” Piney chimes in, lumbering up and claiming his usual corner seat at the bar.

 

Dean laughs and nods to the old man, finishes his coffee and heads to his soon-to-be-former room.  He wonders if he should say something to the men, but he figures they’ll work it out on their own, and anyway, that’s Jax’s decision, not his.

 

It doesn’t take him long to pack.  Growing up on the road had taught Dean not to accumulate needless things, and he takes a little pride in the fact that he can fit everything he’s got into a duffle if he doesn’t count his weapons.  Those have their own bag.

 

Half an hour later, he shoulders his bags, gives the room a once-over, trying to swallow past the sick feeling that this is the last time he’s going to be there.  That’s ridiculous.  They aren’t breaking up, for god’s sake, and when did he grow a pussy, anyway?

 

Closing the door firmly behind him, Dean moves toward the bar but is stopped a few feet from it by J.C., whose smile melts from her face when she gets a look at his burdens.

 

“You’re leaving?”

 

Damnit.

 

“Uh, yeah.  Yeah.  I got a place over on Tupper.  Jax’ll tell you all about it.”

 

Worried relief fills the beautiful girl’s face.  “So Jax knows about this?”

 

Dean huffs a laugh that comes off false and tries to bluff it out.  “’course he does.”

 

“And he’s okay with it?”

Indecision builds the pause that kills, and when he looks back into her blue eyes, they’re filling with tears.

 

“Hey, no.  We’re not breaking up.  I just think it’ll be better for us if I—if _we_ —have a place of our own, you know?  Away from the summit and club business.  Just…”

 

“So you can fuck like bunnies without hearing shit about it the next day?”  Her grin is watery but warm, and Dean is ridiculously relieved.

  
“Yeah.  C’mere,” he says, pulling her into a one-armed hug, kissing the top of her head and squeezing.  “I’m only a few blocks away, and I’ll be around a lot.  Hell, you’ll probably see me more now than you did before.”

 

That’s stretching it, but she doesn’t need to know that.  Dean’s not even sure he’ll be welcome back here, depending on how Jax takes his leaving like this, but Dean’s got to go now, before he loses his resolve.

 

As he passes through the bar area, Bobby sketches him an ironic little wave that tells Dean the club counselor has some idea of what went down between Dean and Jax last night.  Happy he doesn’t have to stop to explain, he says, “I’ll see you at the hospital.”

 

Juice is still in ICU, and Dean isn’t giving up on the kid.

 

Piney grunts what might be a goodbye, and Dean’s out of there, striding down the dark hall toward the exterior door, hoping he doesn’t run into Sack in the parking lot.  He doesn’t want to have to explain himself, and if that makes him a coward, so be it.  Dean’s tired of explaining. 

 

Ope’s as good as his word, and Dean finds the key to 116 Tupper under the cheerful welcome mat on the tiny concrete stoop that passes for a porch in this neighborhood. 

 

It’s not much to look at from the outside, and the inside doesn’t hold any surprises, either.  Cheap brown carpet, worn almost threadbare in the high traffic areas, old linoleum floor in the kitchen, pitted windowsills and mismatched screens.

 

To Dean, who grew up in hot-sheet motels and efficiency apartments, it’s like coming home.  After the brief tour, Dean stands for just a minute in the living room and listens to the noises drifting in through the front screen door:  dogs barking, kids shouting, an engine with a bad timing chain stuttering in idle.

 

He sets the weapons duffle in the smaller of the two bedrooms, puts the other in the larger back room, with its unpromising, sway-bellied mattress and nondescript brown comforter.  Over the bed is a plastic-framed print of ducks flying over a cat-tailed pond, and Dean smirks.  He’s pretty sure he’s seen that same picture at least three dozen times.

 

For a moment, the need to share the observation with Jax makes Dean’s jaw ache and then he shakes away the breathless feeling and goes back out to the car for salt.

 

Jax and the Sons had watched Dean dubiously when he’d insisted on salting and carving sigils in the lintels and window frames of the clubhouse.  They’d given in only after Dean had offered them the obvious argument, “What can it hurt?” and hadn’t let him live it down for weeks after he’d moved in.

 

Now, he goes through the routine in silence, the familiar motions soothing, the strips of wood curling under his knife as he carves in the protective signs that would keep him safe from evil of the supernatural kind.

  
Wouldn’t do jack shit against the ordinary evil of everyday people, but for that, he’s got a bag of guns.

 

By the time he’s done securing the place, grateful there’s no basement for the load of work that takes off of him, Dean’s hungry, and he finds the expected welcome basket on the kitchen counter, resigning himself to a can of soup for an early lunch until he opens the fridge to find milk and butter there, Jetts’ brand mac and cheese mix, dry cereal, coffee, and sugar in the cupboards.

 

Beside the phone, a note in Rita’s stilted print tells him to call her if he needs anything else.

 

He makes a note to send Rita something nice.

 

Under the sink, there’s a bottle of whiskey in a clear, wide-mouthed jar.  Jim Prentiss’ homebrew, Dean knows from the color, and he smiles at Rita’s thoughtfulness.

 

Deciding on coffee and cereal, Dean gets the coffee going on the familiar countertop maker, gets out a utilitarian white bowl he finds in the cupboard over the sink, hunts up a spoon, and fixes himself breakfast.  While the coffee brews, he wanders out to the living room and surveys the television, a big old console-style set in a cheap veneer cabinet.  Beside it, neatly stacked, are DVDs.

 

He can’t help a bark of laughter at the titles—if Rita shopped for his food, Ope was definitely in charge of the entertainment—but foregoes the porn for something a little less stimulating and pops in _Easy Rider_.

 

The picture is grainy but the sound is good, and Dean sits down on the worn tweed sofa to eat with Hopper and Fonda.

 

The landline rings, startling him as he’s getting up to get more coffee, and he almost drops his bowl in his haste to pick up the receiver.

 

It’s gotta be Ope.  No one else has his number, including Dean himself.

 

“Yeah,” he says, chewing the last of his breakfast.

 

“You settled in?”

 

“Yeah, I’m good.  Hey, thanks for the DVDs.  And thank Rita for me, too.  The coffee is awesome!”

 

“No problem.  Look, you up for patrol tonight?  Some of Blue’s boys got a thing.”

 

“Yeah, sure.”

 

Truth be told, Dean’s grateful for the chance to get out of the too-quiet house.  The thought stops him for a second, and it takes Ope saying, “You there?” to shake Dean from the feeling that he’s being handled.

 

“I’m here.  This Rita’s idea or yours?”

 

Ope’s laugh isn’t even a little embarrassed.  “Rita thought you should be kept busy.  I told her you’d spend your free time jerking off, but she didn’t believe me.”

 

It’s Dean’s turn to laugh, grateful for the distraction from the uncomfortable feeling that he needs taking care of.  He doesn’t.  He’s fine.

 

Nevertheless, “Where do you need me?”

 

“Meet Hale at the station.  Nine o’clock.”

 

“I’ll be there.”

 

Ope signs off with a grunt that might be goodbye, and Dean pauses in hanging up the phone to scribble down the number that’s printed neatly in a little plastic window above the old school push buttons.

 

Not that he’ll need to call himself, but Sam might like to have it.  He guesses Jax probably already has it.

 

That leads to speculation on Dean once again having a phone number of his own and to a brief detour down memory lane, thinking of all the waitresses in all the towns all over America who once had his phone number written on their order pads.

 

Most of them are probably dead, of course, and that thought gets him back on track.

 

He’s planning to spend the majority of the day at the hospital, but first he needs to stow his guns someplace secure.  It doesn’t take him long to cut a hole in the drywall at the back of the main bedroom’s closet, pull out the lathe-and-plaster behind that, build a crude wooden safebox, and stow his backup guns neatly behind the drywall.  The rare stuff will stay locked in the Impala, of course, and he’ll have his favorite guns on hand, but it’s always good to have a secure secondary source of guns.

 

That done, Dean checks out the garage, finds a hand mower, a half-dozen full emergency five-gallon water bottles, and assorted yard tools.  The last reminds him to check out the backyard, which doesn’t take long—it’s not much bigger than the front yard, maybe twenty by fifty, fenced in with weathered stockade, a single plum tree holding court over the center.  At the very back, on a little rise, is a brick barbecue/fire pit, and beside it, in a covered box, some seasoned timber.

 

“Sweet,” he says to himself.

 

After cleaning up, Dean heads out, noting that the front lock sticks and trying to remember if he saw any graphite in the garage. 

 

“Hey, neighbor,” a low, melodious voice says, drawing Dean out of his mundane musing.  He looks up to see a thirty-something brunette in cut-offs and a paint-splattered Stones tee-shirt smiling at him.

 

“Hey,” he answers, smiling back.  “I’m Dean.”

 

Her smirk anticipates her words, “I know who you are.  I’m Liz.”

 

Dean moves as if to shake her hand, but she holds her palms up to show that she’s covered in paint. 

 

“I suck at painting,” she confides in him with a self-deprecating smile.

 

“Well, I’ve got somewhere I need to be,” Dean answers, “but if you still need help when I get back, I’ll be glad to get dirty with you.”

He doesn’t mean it the way it sounds—or rather, he does mean it, flirting being second nature.  He just has no intention of following through.  Before he can recover from his mistake, Liz smiles wickedly and shakes her head.

 

“You can talk like that because you know I know better than to take you seriously,” she observes slyly.

 

“Yeah,” he answers, ducking his head sheepishly.  “Sorry about that.”

 

“No problem.  And I’m going to hold you to that offer of help.  I’m doing the whole house, so there’s plenty more painting.”

 

“Is there enough paint is the question,” he teases.

 

She snorts inelegantly and turns away, throwing a breezy, “See you later,” over her shoulder as she gingerly opens the front door and disappears inside.

  
“Huh,” Dean says to himself, speculating.  He has no intention of being unfaithful to Jax, and truthfully, he hasn’t got even a little interest in hitting that.  But it’s nice to know he’s still got the ol’ spark.

 

That happy thought carries him all the way to St. Thomas’ ICU, where his happiness evaporates at the sight of Juice’s bandaged head and sunken, closed eyes. 

 

He wants to spend all of his time on the kid, but he knows it’s going to take it out of him even if his mojo doesn’t work, and there are other patients to look in on first.

 

He makes the rounds, stopping at the maternity ward to look at the most recent addition to Charming’s growing population, something that never fails to remind him that there’s always hope for the future, and then swinging by post-op and recovery.  There’s an appendectomy patient who smiles wanly at him as he pats her hand and tells her she’ll be fine, which seems to be the only comfort he can give, since he gets not even a tingle out of his healing sense.

 

The cancer ward is slow today, which is a relief.  Juan Cardoza is on an IV drip, upright in a comfortable chair.  The chemo has taken most of his hair, made him grey-skinned and hollow-cheeked, but for all of that, he still gives Dean a big, toothy grin and jokes with him about the A’s chances this year.  Dean gets a sense from gripping Juan’s shoulder that he’s given the man something, maybe strength, maybe hope—he’s just not sure there’s magic.

 

Frustration mounting, Dean visits the children’s ward, blessedly empty, and then Ward Three, where Demar’s empty room reminds him of his successes, even if he can’t explain them.

 

The only other occupant of the ward is a ninety-three year old Alzheimer’s sufferer who stares at Dean with rheumy eyes and murmurs something about his wife, who Dean knows (from Jax) died in the first wave of atrocities when the apocalypse unleashed its fury.

 

In the three months he’s been working with his gift, Dean’s had occasion to come up against the euthanasia question twice.  In the case of Mr. Domowitz, Dean thinks it would be a mercy for the old man to go sooner rather than later.  Unfortunately, the man has no living relatives and no living will, so he’s got to die the prolonged, agonizing way Alzheimer’s sometimes takes.

 

Dean’s tempted to lay his hands on the old man and see if he can’t help the heart stutter and stop, but he’s fearful for reasons that have nothing to do with legality.  For one thing, if he uses the gift of healing to kill someone instead, will he lose it altogether? 

 

Was he given the gift to help people, no matter what form that help might take, or is he supposed to horde it for specific cases, for which he’ll be given some obscure sign?

 

Sighing, Dean pats the old man’s hand again, says, “Delores loves you and says she’ll be by later, Mr. Domowitz,” and then departs at a quick clip, glad to be away from the despair that hangs over the old man like the stench of death.

 

Of course, there’s plenty of despair waiting for him in the ICU, as well.  Tara fills him in at the nurse’s station nearest the newly occupied room.

 

Annie Cho is in the glass-walled room, her breathing kept steady by the hush-shush of a respirator.  She’d come in last night apparently having suffered a brain aneurysm.  She’s twenty-three, and it isn’t looking like she’ll see twenty-four.  Beside her, her partner, Kate, strokes her hand and talks in a low voice of the flowers coming up in their garden.

 

She rises and greets Dean with a look he’s come to hate:  Hope.

 

Kate offers Dean her chair with diffidence bordering on reverence, and Dean has to swallow past a protest before he can sit down and take up the hand that Kate had given over to him.

 

“Do you want me to leave?” she asks.  “Will that be better?”

 

Dean clears his throat of tightness and nods.  “Maybe get yourself a cup of coffee, okay?”  The weight of expectation makes it hard for him to concentrate, and with his mojo already unpredictable, Dean needs all the focus he can get.

 

“O-okay,” she stutters, backing out of the room, eyes on Annie.

 

Annie’s hand cool in his, Dean closes his eyes and breathes the way he’s been taught, trying to clear his mind of everything but the tenuous presence of the woman in the bed before him.

 

Settling his fingers more firmly against the pulse at her wrist, Dean times his breathing to her heartbeat and tries to open himself to the healing energy.

 

Of course, it’s not that simple—it never has been, and Dean can’t find words to describe it, even to the New Age types at Weitzs’ Studio.  Sometimes it’s like a surge of electricity, sometimes like shattered pieces of light racing through his bloodstream.

 

Now, though, it’s just his breath, steady and even, and her pulse, definite against his fingers. 

 

Early days, Dean’d try to imagine the part of the body he was supposed to be healing, but a lack of anatomical knowledge and an imagination fed by seeing the actual insides of far too many monsters had led him to abandon “visualization,” as Melissa insists on calling it.

 

Now he just sort of feels around and hopes he hits on the right thing.

 

He doesn’t know how long he’s under; occasionally, he’ll get caught up in the pattern of breaths and lose track of time altogether.

 

When Annie’s hand twitches under his, though, that brings him back.

 

Behind him, Kate gasps and drops her coffee.  “Annie!”  Then she bolts to the bedside, shouldering aside Dean, who’s trying to get out of her way.

  
He staggers, knees feeling weak, head swimming, and catches himself on the wall, pin-balling his way from the room until the far hallway wall is at his back and he can slide down it to a safer position, seated, legs splayed in front of him on the floor.

 

“She’s awake,” he calls out, surprised at how weak his voice sounds.

 

Someone must hear him—or Kate pushed the panic button—because Tara and a nurse are racing past him seconds later, Tara sparing him a cursory look, which he answers with a wobbly nod.

 

“I’m fine,” he whispers to her retreating back.

 

“Need a hand?”

 

It takes a glacial age for Dean to work up the energy to lift his head far enough to see Jax standing between his booted feet in a pose intended to suggest that Jax’s offer is totally casual.

 

Dean knows Jax better than that, though, can see in Jax’s eyes the worry he won’t voice.

 

He thinks he nods, but since the whole hallway is moving in lazy whirls, Dean can’t be sure.  Jax must get it, though, because he puts his hands under Dean’s arms and levers him up, using the wall to hold him steady until he can sling one of Dean’s arms over his shoulder and half-carry, half-walk him to the ICU waiting area.

 

Bobby’s there and Chibs.  Half-Sack and Mouse are cozy in one corner.  Rita gets up to give Dean and Jax two seats together, Jax saying, “Thanks,” as he lowers Dean into a chair and then sits down beside him.

 

“I’ll get him some juice,” Rita offers, not waiting for an answer.

 

Dean closes his eyes to try to stop the room from spinning, takes some deep breaths to steady himself.  Jax’s hand is an anchoring weight on his thigh, and when he can finally move without restarting the merry-go-round, he puts his own hand over Jax’s for just a second, as if to say several things he won’t put into words.

 

When he opens his eyes again, Dean sees that the room is empty except for the two of them.

 

“Did I pass out?” he asks, wondering how much time has passed.

  
Jax snorts.  “Nah, it’s just their way of giving us some privacy.”

They’re quiet for awhile, Dean still trying to regain his strength, Jax apparently content to sit with his hand on Dean, saying nothing.

 

Then, “Ope says you’re settled in.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“That’s good.”

 

“Not as good as it could be.”  Dean doesn’t know quite where that came from, maybe his exhaustion or the emotionalism that sometimes rushes over him after he gets his healing mojo working.

 

Whatever the case, Jax seems as surprised as Dean by the admission.  “We talked about this, Dean.”

 

“Not really,” Dean answers.  “I talked, and you didn’t listen.  You had it in your head that I couldn’t move, and that was the end of the story as far as you were concerned.”

 

It takes him some time to say even that much, his tongue heavy, eyelids drooping with exhaustion.

 

“Hey, man, let’s just drop it for now.  You’re beat.  I’m going to get you home,” Jax starts to say, stopping when they both hear his words.

 

“My place?” Dean asks.

 

Dean’s thigh feels cold when Jax pulls his hand away. 

 

“Fine.”

 

“Never mind,” Dean answers at Jax’s clipped tone.  “I can sleep here.  Tara fixed me up a room in the empty wing.  I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

 

“Suit yourself.”  Despite that he’s obviously pissed at Dean, Jax helps him to the room Tara had set aside for Dean, helps him out of his boots and over shirt, sees him settled in.

 

Then he hovers uncertainly between the bed and the door, until Dean says, “I’m okay, Jax.  But thanks, man.” 

 

“You don’t ever need to thank me, asshole,” Jax says fondly, leaving at last.

 

“Hey,” Dean manages, Jax pausing in the door, looking back at him over his shoulder.  “This isn’t the end,” he vows, trying to make Jax hear the promise.

 

Jax’s answering smile is bittersweet and tired.  “I know. We’ve been to the end, remember?”  Then he’s gone.

 

Dean’s asleep before Jax’s footsteps fade from his hearing.

 

He wakes up to a squawking like a thousand murderous crows only to find that the alarm clock radio next to the bed is shattering the peace with blaring static.

 

He slams the snooze bar down, levers himself up, and tries to ease the pounding in his heart.  “Jesus,” he mutters, wiping his face with his hand and ruffling his hair sleepily.  According to the clock, which he’d swear he didn’t set, he’s been asleep two hours.

 

That means Dean has plenty of time to see Juice, if he’s up to it.

 

Once on his feet and back in his boots, Dean feels pretty steady, though his mouth tastes like a cat crawled into it and died.  A detour past the little café the hospital runs for the skeleton staff and patients’ families hooks him up with much-needed coffee—house blend, Charming’s own beans, even—and Dean’s feeling almost human.

 

Back at the ICU, he sees Annie sitting up and smiling at Kate, who waves frantically for Dean to come in.  He mouths, “I can’t” and points down the unit toward Juice’s room, and Kate nods her understanding and says, “Thank you!”

 

Annie echoes her lover’s sentiments, and Dean can’t help but smile.  _Score one for the good guys_ , he thinks.

 

The feeling fades as he takes in Juice’s face, paler, if possible, and with shadows carving their way under his eyes.  He looks dead already, and Dean knows from dead.

 

Chibs is sitting with him, and through the window, he can just make out the Scot’s lips moving, talking to Juice, keeping his brain in the game.

 

It’s probably as much for Chibs’ comfort as the kid’s.

 

Stifling a sigh, Dean pushes through the door, and Chibs rises immediately, the one-visitor-at-a-time rule among the few the club doesn’t regularly violate when one of their own is down.

 

Chibs exchanges the patented Sons hand-clutch-half-hug move with Dean, and Dean’s grateful for the contact, otherwise cold through at what’s coming.  Then the older man is gone, and it’s just Juice and Dean and the beeping machines.

 

The seat Chibs abandoned still warm, Dean sits and looks at Juice for awhile.  The kid had taken to wearing his hair in a Mohawk down the middle, the maintenance a little easier in this post-shaving-cream age, but they’d had to cut into it at odd angles when they’d worked on his skull, and he looks somehow younger for it.

 

“Hey,” Dean tries, having to clear his throat before he says it again, more convincingly.  “You’re going to flip your shit when you wake up and see what they did to your hair.  It’ll be the tats next, man.  You should wake up.”

 

Feeling stupid, Dean pushes on anyway, sharing inane crap with the kid, talking about what’s happening in Charming, Miriam’s latest experiment in low-flour baking, and the recent upsurge in double births among Charming’s rapidly growing sheep population.

 

Finally, recognizing stalling for what it is, Dean sighs and stops talking, slips a hand between the rails of the bed guard, and grips Juice’s hand. 

 

Dean tries breathing.  He tries tempering his breath to slide into the deeper state of not-awareness that leads to wherever it is he goes when he actually succeeds in healing someone.  He can’t seem to find that place now, though.

 

Swallowing a frustrated growl, Dean shifts in his seat and tries again, this time using the gentle hush-shush of the respirator to focus his breathing.  It must work, because the next thing he knows, there’s someone gripping his shoulder and easing his hand away from Juice’s.

 

It’s harder than he expects to open his eyes, not that Dean needs to.  He recognizes the calluses on Jax’s hand, the faint scent of clean tee-shirt, leather cut, and the soap they used.  Jax used.  Uses.

 

Verb tenses are too much for Dean, so he makes the effort to pry his lids up, and he finds Jax staring at him, lips moving, no sound coming out.

 

Pretty sure Jax hasn’t taken up mime, Dean tries to clear his head and come fully back to the room, sound pouring into his ears like water breaking over his head until he says, “Okay!” maybe louder than he meant to.

 

Jax takes a step away but doesn’t drop Dean’s hand.

 

“Sorry,” Dean manages, tongue sticking to his palate.  “You startled me.”

 

“No shit.”  Drier than Dean’s mouth.  Then, “You okay?  You look like hell.”

 

“I’ve seen hell,” he answers, falling automatically into their usual routine:  deflection, humorous defense, tough-love biker-style.  “I’m better looking.”

 

“It’s not funny, man.  You should see yourself.”

 

He catches in Jax’s tone a different kind of uneasiness.

 

“I need to take a leak anyway,” Dean says, shrugging off the sense that there’s something Jax isn’t saying.  Since his lover isn’t known for diplomacy, Dean wonders if there’s real reason for alarm.

 

He gets his answer a moment later when he tries to stand and can’t.

 

“Shit,” he mutters as nausea twists his stomach into backflips and the room tilts like a carnival ride run by a drunk.

 

“Chibs says you’ve been in here for over an hour,” Jax tells him with that neutral tone he gets when he’s trying hard not to lose his cool.

 

Dean doesn’t know what to say to that.  He’s never been able to gauge real time when he’s in that other place.  Hopeful, though, he lets his balance and gravity duke it out for supremacy as he studies Juice’s face.  Are his cheeks a little rosier?  Is there movement behind his bruised lids?

 

An hour’s got to mean something, right?

 

 _Might mean you’re losing your mojo_ , Dean thinks, and then, _Fuck this_ , as he tries standing for a second time.

 

Jax’s hand is around his elbow, the other hovering behind him in case he needs to catch Dean’s weight.  He feels like a fucking invalid.

 

“’m alright,” he asserts, taking a deep breath as the world settles around him.

 

“Sure.”  Jax doesn’t sound convinced. 

 

Dean takes an experimental step to prove that he’s okay.  When that seems to work, he tries another, and soon enough he’s out of the room and making his slow way toward the nurse’s station.

 

“Woah, where’re you going?”

 

“Have Steve page Tara, see if Juice is any better.”

 

“Tara got called to an emergency in the OR.”

 

“Oh.”  It occurs to him that he should ask about the emergency, but Dean can’t seem to muster any real interest.  He feels disconnected, distant from Jax, from St. Thomas.  From his own body.

 

When he comes to, he’s in an unfamiliar hospital room—which is saying something, given how much time he spends at the hospital these days.  Jax is in a chair beside him, one knee expressing volumes as it bucks and jiggles.

 

“How long?”

 

Jax doesn’t need full sentences, which is good, since Dean’s head feels like it’s about to pry itself apart so his brain can make good an escape.

 

“Ten minutes,” Jax answers without consulting the clock.

 

“Sorry?” Dean tries.

  
Jax snorts.  “Bullshit.”

 

Dean shrugs and then wishes he hadn’t.  His head really hurts.

 

“Aspirin?” he asks, trying to sound manly and pathetic at the same time.

  
Another snort suggests it’s not working.  “You threw up all over Nurse Steve.  No aspirin.”

 

“Whiskey?”

 

That gets an actual laugh, though it’s almost as pained as Dean’s expression.

 

“You can’t keep this shit up, Dean.”

 

“Oh, I don’t know.  I can keep it up for awhile.”  As innuendo goes, it sucks, but hey, migraine.

 

Jax’s stony silence suggests the humor approach won’t work this time.  Sighing, Dean tries another tack.

“You know I’ve got to try, Jax.  It’s Juice.”

 

“Yeah, I get that, Dean.  But you already did the resurrection routine on Annie this morning.  Did you really think you could do two in one day like that?”

 

“I didn’t know, Jax, and I figured there was only one way to find out.”  In truth, Dean hadn’t given it a second thought.  Juice was in bad shape, Dean had healing hands, end of story. 

 

Jax is shaking his head, on his face an expression half disgust, half exasperation. 

 

“You keep pushing like this, you’re going to end up in the room next to Juice’s.  That won’t help anyone.”

 

Dean ignores the mothering in favor of asking after Juice.

  
Even before Jax says, “No change,” Dean can see the disappointment in Jax’s face.

 

“Shit, man, I’m—“

 

“Stop apologizing, goddamnit.  It’s not your fucking fault!”  Jax shoots from the chair and grips the bed rail.

 

The squeak-squeak of a nurse’s shoes warns them to bring it down a notch.

 

In a fierce whisper, Dean says, “It’s not you who’s got this so-called ‘gift,’ so stop telling me how to use it, Jax.  I can’t just sit on my ass and wish the kid better.”

 

“And I can’t let you work yourself to death!”

 

Jax must realize his mistake seconds after he makes it because he’s already raising his hands and stepping back a little from where he’d been looming over Dean in the bed.

  
For his part, Dean levers himself upright, ignoring how that turns the pain in his head up to 11, and growls, “Let me?  So you’re going to _let_ me do things now?  I’m not at the club, not in your bed, so you think you can just order me around like one of your peons?  Well, fuck you, Jax.  You can’t tell me to do a goddamn thing!”

 

A change comes over Jax’s face like a flash-fire, anger hot enough that Dean can almost feel Jax’s eyes searing holes through his chest.

 

“So that’s why you moved out?  Because you thought I had too much control?  You couldn’t have just talked to me about it, told me what you were feeling?  You had to move to another fucking place?”

 

It’s surreal having this fight, the worst one yet, in strained tones through clenched teeth, but Dean’s not backing down.  Too much has been said to unsay it, anyway.

 

“I didn’t move out because of us, Jax.  How many times do I have to say it?  I was hoping _we_ could move out.  But you’re too stubborn to—“

 

“Me?  You’re the one who knocked himself unconscious twice in the same day!”

“Don’t change the subject.”  Dean’s given up the vehement whisper in favor of a tired drone.  The day has caught up with him, his head hurts, he’s seeing spots at the edges of his vision.  Last thing he needs is to black out again.  He’s got to just get this over with.

 

“I thought it would be better for us if we had a place of our own.  And I thought it would be better for you to separate your political life from your personal one.  Maybe you can’t see it, Jax, but people like Austin?  There are a hell of a lot of them out there.  And just because we personally don’t give a flying fuck what he thinks doesn’t mean that what he thinks doesn’t have an effect on what we’re trying to do in Charming.”

 

Jax is quiet for so long that Dean gets nervous, going over his words in his head to see where he fucked up.

 

He’s halfway through the monologue, pain starting to get the better of his ability to think clearly, when Jax says, too quiet:  “So you moved out for _me_?  One more sacrifice in the name of saving the world?  One more thing Dean Winchester gives up?”

 

“No,” Dean says, shaking his head and then stopping abruptly when pain lances through his temple.  He winces despite his effort not to.  “No, I—“  but if he keeps talking, he’s going to throw up. The pain now is blinding.  It would be a mercy if someone took a hammer to the back of his head.

 

Jax makes a sound, maybe impatience, probably frustration, and leaves the room without a word, reappearing a few minutes later with Steve.  Dean doesn’t open his eyes, but he recognizes the nurse’s tread.  When a penlight razors through the vision of his left eye, Dean shouts and pulls away, almost going over the opposite bed rail in an attempt to prevent that pain from happening again.

 

The motion proves unwise for his delicate stomach, though, and he retches, the heaves so powerful that it feels like his eyes are going to detach and dribble down his cheeks.  Pain follows retching follows pain until he thinks he might be begging.  He can’t hear around the roaring in his ears, though.

 

Mercifully, someone turns out his lights.

 

The second—or is it third?—time he comes to, Dean is confused by the halo around Jax’s head until he blinks enough to resolve the image.  His lover’s face is still blurry—enough for Dean to be unable to discern whether it’s anger or anxiety twisting his lips into a familiar frown—but the fuzzy white light around his dirty blonde hair is gone.

 

Jax offers him a straw before Dean can ask, and when he drinks a little, makes sure it’ll stay down, and takes some more, he’s able to say, “What happened?”

 

“Vomiting, nosebleed, blackout.”

 

“Good party?”

 

Jax doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even smirk.  There’s a dullness in his eyes that suggests he’s been at Dean’s bedside too long to find anything funny.

 

“Sorry,” he says, and he means it.  _Sorry for worrying you.  Sorry for putting that look on your face._

 

He’s not sorry for trying to heal Juice, though.

“Juice?”

 

Jax shrugs.  “Same.”

 

Dean just closes his eyes at that.  _Damnit_.  He doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong.  For the healing hangover he’s got, he should’ve made some difference.  “Kid’s skull’s too damned thick,” he observes, trying to move around the sorrow taking up residence in his chest.

 

“You’re tellin’ me.”  Then, “Tara says you’ve got to stay the night.”

 

“No way.  I’ve got patrol tonight.”

 

“Dean, it’s nine-thirty already.  I called Blue an hour ago.”

 

“What?”  He moves his head carefully, so carefully, to take in the curtained window at the far end of the two-bed room.  Over the empty second bed, he can just see the darker outline of night where the two halves of the curtain don’t quite meet.  “Shit.”

 

“It wasn’t a stroke,” Jax says then, almost conversationally.  “Tara says it was a warning.  Says you could pop a blood vessel in your head if you keep pushing like that.  Could end up like Annie was or like Juice.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Dean says again, and this time, Jax comes close enough to touch the back of Dean’s hand where a needle feeds drugs into his bloodstream on a slow drip.

 

“You keep saying that, but you don’t change anything.”

 

Since Jax is right, Dean’s got nothing to say to that.

 

“Look, I’ve gotta take off.”

 

Jax’s face is unreadable, but Dean knows what the other is thinking.  There’s no resolution to this argument and neither of them has the energy for it anyway.

 

“Stay here, will you?”

 

Jax doesn’t plead.  He’s King of the World and a badass biker besides.  He’s faced things that would make most men piss themselves.  But since Dean was beside Jax when the piss-inducing things went down, he knows that Jax’s neutral tone means he’s doing his best to keep his feelings to himself.

 

Which means he has feelings.  For Dean.

 

Which means they’re fine.  They’ll be fine.

 

“I’ll stay.”  Dean hates being in a hospital bed, and Jax damn well knows it.  This is as close to a concession as he can give his lover for now.

 

Jax nods, stands.  Somehow, even with his hands shoved in his pockets, he manages to make the two strides to Dean’s side look easy and swaggering.

 

A wash of warm, stale-coffee breath twists Dean up inside with a longing so fierce he almost abandons his just-given word in favor of going home with Jax right now.  Then Jax is kissing Dean, lips hard and dry, chaste at first and then changing into something powerful—promise and warning all wrapped up with worry and love.

 

Dean takes the punishment, opens his mouth, pliant and willing, letting Jax in.

 

Only a deliberate clearing of the throat from the doorway breaks them apart, and even then it’s a slow disentangling of tongues, so that moistness clings between their mouths for precious seconds before Jax’s lips quirk into a triumphant smirk and they turn their heads at the same time to see Doc Maartens standing there.

 

His answering smirk is knowing.

 

“Can’t keep you two away—from here or each other, it seems.”

 

“Well, you do have the best Jell-o in the world,” Dean answers.

 

“And the only Jell-o, I think,” Doc answers, approaching the two.  “How’re you feeling, Dean?”

 

Dean shrugs, “Better.  Fuzzy.”

 

“Mm.”  Maartens consults Dean’s chart.  Nodding at the IV bag, he says at last, “That’s a heavy-duty cocktail of pain and anti-nausea meds.  It’s likely to make you feel ‘fuzzy,’ as you say.  How’s your vision?”

 

Dean tracks the doctor’s finger, even lets him shine a light in his eyes.

 

“We good?” he asks after Maartens makes some notations on the chart.  Jax watches from the corner, out of the way but definitely interested.

 

“I think if you stop overdoing it with the healing ‘mojo,’ it would help.  Nosebleeds are a warning sign, Mr. Winchester.  I didn’t give you a miracle knee so you could work yourself to death a few months later, you know.”

 

Dean nods, sheepish grin on his face.  “I know, Doc.  I’ll take better care.  Promise.”

 

Doc smirks at Jax’s loud snort and nods to him.  “He’s a difficult man, this one,” he says by way of sympathizing.

 

“He’s a pain in the ass,” Jax retorts.

 

“That, too,” Maartens says, exiting with a laugh.

 

“Everyone’s a comedian,” Dean complains, but it’s fond and familiar, and as Jax nears the bed once more, he’s wearing a warm look that makes Dean wish he could go home with Jax.  His home.  Jax’s home. 

 

Whatever.

 

“You want me to stay?” Jax asks, softly.

The charcoal smudges under and the redness in Jax’s eyes betray his exhaustion, and much as Dean might enjoy the company, he’s not that selfish.

  
“Nah, get out of here.  Get some sleep.  I’ll be alright.”

 

“Okay,” Jax says after a considering pause, during which his eyes seem to pin Dean down, suggesting things his spirit is eager to accept but his flesh too weak to attempt.  “Don’t get dead.” 

 

In their relationship, it’s a declaration of love.

  
“You either,” Dean answers, completing the vow.

 

Jax kisses Dean again, soft and lingering this time, close-mouthed and perfect.

 

Dean’s aching inside and out when it ends.

 

*****

 

 _Just because death is inevitable doesn’t mean you have to let it come naturally._ (Acts of the Sons 21:3)

 

Austin is an asshole.

 

This time, Jax doesn’t need a gun in his hand to shut the other man up.  He’s seconds away from hurdling the table and beating the loudmouthed fucker to death with his bare hands.  He can practically feel the way the skin over his cheekbones will split, and his hands ache with the phantom of every hard bone hit he’s ever dished out.

  
Hands white-knuckling the arms of his chair, Jax is about to hurl himself upward when Austin shuts up.

 

One second, he’s rattling on about food supply lines and the next he’s sitting back in his chair and putting up his hands.

  
“You know what?  None of you all are interested in hearing me talk anymore about this.  Let me just yield the floor to someone else.”

 

Jax almost mutters, “Christo,” under his breath, practically a reflex having lived with Dean for so long.

 

He keeps it to himself, though, and examines the evidence of his eyes, instead.  Austin isn’t calm.  The white around his lips, the arrhythmic judder of his foot against the floor, the way a small vein in his eyelid keeps twitching and jumping.

  
No, the guy hasn’t suddenly found Jesus, and it doesn’t look like J.C. slipped a horse tranq into his coffee, either.

 

Taking a breath, Jax reaches for the gift that God gave him, nothing nearly so flashy—or painful—as Dean’s healing touch, just a biding sense of what someone is feeling, a kind of empathy that makes him a better leader.  Usually.  When he has the patience to use it.

 

As he suspected, Austin feels like a tire spinning shoulder grit into the air, thoughts winging at high velocity in every direction and not really caring what they hit along the way.

Whatever’s motivated this sudden silence is unclear, but Jax is suspicious.

 

Madge is, too.  “What fresh bullshit is this?” she asks, incredulous.

 

Fallon barks a short, sharp laugh and shifts in her seat.

  
Three Rivers murmurs something inaudible but probably condescending.

  
Everyone looks at Austin.

 

The man spreads his hands and slaps on a completely unbelievable good-ol’-boy smile.  “I just think it’s time we moved this thing along, is all.  If I’m doin’ more ‘n my fair share of the talkin’, well, we aren’t gonna get very far.”

 

Jax has noticed the man puts on his Texas thicker when he thinks it’ll get him places.  No one at the table is the least bit fooled by his crap, but they’re all so tired at this point, every one of them seems willing to let it slide.

For now.

 

“Alright,” Jax interjects, trying not to sound skeptical.  “So we’ve decided who supplies what to who and when.  Unless there are any further changes—“  He pauses only long enough to ascertain that no one is going to interrupt him.  “—I’ll ask Rita to formalize these and we can go over them after lunch.  Which we should probably break for…”

 

He looks around the table, sees fatigue and hope in every face except Austin’s.  He’s apparently decided that the “constipated but innocent” look works for him.

 

“Same deal as always.  If you want to stay here, I’ll have J.C. make you something.  Or you’ve got credit at Miriam’s.  Don’t eat too much, though.  It’s spaghetti night, and Bobby’s homemade sauce is worth saving room for.”

 

“Tomatoes,” Fallon whispers in the voice women usually reserve for more intimate words said while naked.

 

Jax grins.  “Plenty more where they came from.”

 

Madge snorts.  “Show off.”

 

Jax shrugs and grins, glad to be getting out of there for an hour or so.  “We’ll reconvene at 2:00, alright?”

 

Nods and yeses all around.

 

Jax thinks about swinging by the hospital, if only to make sure Dean had actually left.  Jax knows he checked out; he called Wendy just to be sure.  But that doesn’t mean Dean didn’t head right for Juice’s room again.

  
Then he thinks better of mothering Dean.  Clearly, Dean isn’t going to be swayed by oversight, and Jax isn’t up for another argument after spending the morning talking, talking, talking.

 

He settles for swinging by Dean’s place on Tupper, just to make sure the Impala’s in the driveway.

  
It’s not.

 

“Shit,” Jax mutters into the wind, pulling a wide U-y and heading toward the hospital.  His route takes him past Chuck’s house, however, and there he sees Dean’s car snugged up to the curb, the man himself in the driveway bent over the open hood of a beater Chuck has taken on as a project to improve his manliness factor or something.

 

Jax privately thinks Chuck has a crush on Dean, but since Chuck also shares his little house with Wendy, who’s not short on looks and is most definitely long on sex appeal, Jax doesn’t worry about the little guy.

 

Besides, Jax still makes Chuck nervous, and he’s not above using that to his own advantage.

  
Satisfied that Dean is taking it easy, he sketches a wave and keeps going, hoping Dean doesn’t take Jax’s drive-by as evidence of further mother-henning.

 

It’s not like Jax is a stalker or anything, either, no matter how it looks.

Rare free time ahead of him and not particularly hungry, Jax decides to take a ride, heading for the less populated two-lanes that skirt the interior borders of what they’ve mapped out as Charming’s protected limits.  He takes the long way ‘round, coming to the Reservoir only near the end of the loop, pulling in at the gravel lot and climbing off, stretching out on the grass verge with his hands behind his head, content to stare at the sky and let his mind drift.

  
His walkie squawks, and he raises an arm, giving a thumbs-up to let the hidden snipers guarding the Reservoir from their nests know he’s okay.  A double-click comes back in the affirmative.

 

Then it’s the gentle lapping of water and a songbird somewhere nearby singing its guts out.

 

Jax tries not to think about how much better it would be with Dean there sharing the bank, his heat almost palpable along Jax’s hip and thigh where they nearly touch, his deep voice lulling Jax into dreams of better days.

 

Intellectually, Jax understands and even respects Dean’s decision to move to Tupper Street.  He knows, too, that he should shut up about it and give in gracefully, move in a toothbrush and some underwear, take over a bottle of the good scotch.

 

Make a life with Dean that isn’t all about the club.

 

But what he thinks and what he feels are at odds, and until he settles it with his gut, Jax isn’t going anywhere.

  
The clubhouse has been his home for years, since long before Dean Motherfucking Winchester fell into his life with all the subtlety of a world-ending cataclysm.

 

Jax was wearing a tiny little Sons cap before Dean Winchester got his baptism by fire into the very life that would eventually bring them together.

 

It’s a lot of history to let go of all at once.  Of course, if he’s willing to be honest with himself, he should’ve seen this coming.  They’ve talked before about “political expedience” and “comfort zones” and “perceptions of the people.”

 

Jax’s answer had been consistently predictable and routine:  “Fuck them.”

 

As Ope patiently points out every time Jax shares that attitude with his second in command, that’s not good enough anymore.

 

Jax isn’t just President of Samcro.  He’s King.  Of the World.

 

Fuck.

 

Being wrong is exhausting, and Jax almost drifts off when his walkie burps rudely and a voice says, “Jax, you running late?  Over.”

 

J.C.’s voice is somehow sunny even with the distortion of distance.

 

“Yeah,” he throws back, ignoring protocol.  He hates that CB shit.  “Be there in five.”

 

It usually takes ten, but Jax doesn’t mind breaking the law when he’s on sparsely inhabited roads, and besides, he deserves a little something for all the shit he’s put up with in the past few weeks.

 

Plus, who’d have the balls to pull him over?

 

Why he hurries is a question he ponders during another long session of taking care of details he never cared about before and has to force himself to care about now.

 

Still, Austin’s unnatural reticence holds for another two days, days marked by surprising productivity that makes Jax at once pleased and a little uneasy.

 

Of course it’s great that they work out the location of the next summit (Madge’s diner in Salina, UT), policies for representing themselves as a confederacy to other entities (i.e. surviving cities, city-states, confederacies, and nations), rules for electing new delegates to the assembly, and policies regarding travel routes, communications, water sharing, food and drug trade, defense and munitions, and a shitload of other diplomatic crap Jax didn’t used to care about.

 

What’s not comforting is Austin’s continued complacency.  Something is definitely in the wind, and no amount of indefinite delving around in the guy’s head seems to get Jax anywhere.

 

“See if you can find anything out,” he’d asked Ope on Day Four, after Austin had spilled what he knew about Charming’s extra weapons stockpile.  “Someone’s gotta be talkin’ to him.  Get Sack, rotate shifts with a couple of Blue’s guys, find out who Austin’s in bed with.”

 

But Ope and the crew hadn’t come up with much, either.  Unless Austin has a secret means of communicating with a collaborator inside Charming, he’s clean. 

 

Still, Jax can’t shake the feeling that there’s shit that hasn’t yet hit the fan.

 

Here they are wrapping up another successful day of summarizing and ratifying, with maybe one day left to go before they can party hard and he can say sayonara to the summit delegates for awhile, and Jax is finding it harder to concentrate than he had when Austin was actively trying to derail them at every turn.

 

When he bothers to be honest with himself, Jax knows that he’s distracted by this thing with Dean.

 

Not counting the time he thought Dean was dead and looked for him anyway for eight months, this is the most time Jax and Dean have ever spent apart when one or the other of them wasn’t actively in the middle of a crisis somewhere else.

 

Zombie apocalypse in LA.

 

Orange apocalypse in Mendota.

 

The usual.

 

This is different.  This is Jax wondering how Dean’s doing and knowing he could find out with a phone call but not calling.

 

This is Jax calling Sam instead to see how Dean is doing without actually asking.

 

This is Jax indulging in chick shit he will never, ever admit to Dean.

 

Assuming he’s ever alone with Dean again.

He’d actually run into his lover twice, both times—surprise, surprise—at St. Thomas.  The second time, last night, Dean had looked like he should be lying down in a hospital bed himself, not leaning in the doorway of the ICU room watching Tara check Juice’s vitals.

 

Jax hadn’t asked.  He’d wanted to.  He’d wanted to yell and throw shit and maybe beat Dean into unconsciousness himself, save them the step of waiting for Dean to pass out.

 

He’d done none of that.  He’d nodded and smiled, exchanged awkward small talk, tried not to notice the way his throat closed up when Dean left.

 

Pussy.  He’s turning into a goddamn pussy.

 

That thought hadn’t stopped him from swinging by the nurse’s lounge to quiz Wendy.

 

That talk had led to an impromptu late-night visit from Chuck, who actually climbed up to the roof where Jax had gone to get some space and smoke a spliff.

 

Chuck had joined him nervously, taken a toke or two, probably to be polite, and then rambled for fifteen minutes about angel radio and Dean.

 

The short of it: “I’m worried about him.”

 

Jax had eyed the ex-prophet in silence, just long enough for the ganja haze to wear off in Chuck and the neurotic to set back in hardcore.  Chuck had fidgeted, shifted in his lawn chair, wiped his palms on his jeans, made to rise.

  
“Sit,” Jax had ordered.

 

“O-okay, sure, Jax,” Chuck had said, almost tipping over backwards in his haste to comply.

 

“What do you mean, ‘worried’?”

 

“I mean, you know Dean, he’s—  Well, you _know_.  He’s working too hard and not taking care of himself and, well, I think he feels responsible for the ones he can’t save.  The ones like—“

 

“Juice.”  Jax had nodded, felt the skin around his eyes tightening.

 

“Yeah,” Chuck had said on an exhale, sounding defeated and small.  “And this thing with you—“  Smaller still, so Jax had had to lean forward to make him out at all.

 

“He talked about us?”  Jax had winced at how eager he’d sounded, glad it was dark enough on the roof, even with the security lights, to hide his blush.  Fucking pussy.

 

“Yeah,” Chuck had repeated.  “He said you were uh, unhappy, with him.  Said he wishes you could s-see things his way.  Not that you don’t have your reasons.  I mean, I’m sure you do.  Have your reasons.”  A pause of awkward seconds.  “Right?”

 

The spliff had burned down almost to his fingers.  He’d felt the heat working through the calluses around his bitten nails.  Jax had taken a last long draw and closed his eyes, nodding tightly as he’d released the smoke in a flat stream from his pressed lips.

“Yeah,” he’d said at last, nodding some more.  “Yeah, I do.”

 

“Well…I’m sure you’ll work it out. You’re obviously meant to be together.”

 

“You get that from the angels?”  Jax hadn’t looked at the man, just out into the darkness beyond the edge of the roof.

 

“No.  I see that myself every time you’re together.  Dean needs you.  You need him.  It’s fate.”

 

Jax had laughed, and it hadn’t been a pleasant sound.  “Fate.”  He’d spat it like a dirty word.

 

“Or God.”  It had had the quality of a verbal shrug, like Chuck talked about God all the time. 

 

“I’ll make sure he’s okay.”  Jax had made it a point for most of his adult life—since his father had taught him the meaning of betrayal—never to say anything to a friend that he didn’t mean.  How he was going to make good on this promise, he hadn’t known at the time, but that hadn’t stopped Jax from saying the words.

 

“I know you will,” Chuck had answered promptly.  “You’re a good man.  You’re good for him,” Chuck had added as he’d stood up and turned to leave the roof.

  
“Thanks,” Jax had answered.

 

Pausing at the ladder, Chuck had only added, “Take care of yourself, too,” tentatively, like there had been some question in his mind how Jax might take the advice.

 

Jax had only nodded and waved a pale hand in the dark.

 

Dragging his head back now from trying to figure out how he was going to take care of Dean when he hadn’t even seen him alone in almost three days, Jax realizes there’s a silent expectancy at the table that means he’s supposed to have been paying attention.

  
Shit.

 

Reviewing the last thing he can remember, Jax throws out there, “Radio codes?”

 

Madge snorts, Fallon swears under her breath, and Montrose fidgets.  Austin says nothing.

 

“Sorry.  What were you saying?”  He’s not looking at any of the delegates in particular since he has no idea who was last talking.

 

“I said,” says Flagstaff with brittle patience, “‘Are we interested in talking about illegal drugs?’  We’ve already covered the legal kind.”

 

“There are no illegal drugs in Charming.”

 

Madge snorts again and makes a familiar motion with two tight fingers on her right hand.

  
Jax grins.  “No _illegal_ drugs.  We’re using an earlier California code,” he explains, completely unapologetic.

“I don’t want that stuff in Flagstaff,” Walt asserts.  Three Rivers nods his vigorous support of that opinion.

 

Fallon smirks, Madge shakes her head and smiles, Montrose looks pained and waffles, “Shouldn’t it be up to individual cities to regulate the traffic of illegal substances?”

 

“Well, hell, Jerry, o’ course it should, but that don’t mean we can’t help things along by making it clear what we will and won’t let inside our borders.”  Austin sounds almost reasonable, almost likeable.

 

Jax has to suppress a snort of his own.

 

“So we don’t export,” Jax asserts. 

 

“What about medicinals?”  Walt asks.

  
“Make up your mind,” Madge barks.  “Do you want Mary Jane or don’t you?  You can’t have it both ways.”

 

“We haven’t exactly got the facilities to render medicinal marijuana,” Fallon points out.

 

“Yeah, you want the bud, you’ll have to process it yourself,” Jax says.

 

“Alright,” Walt agrees.  “Should we put marijuana on the medicinals list or under luxuries, in that case?”

 

“Why don’t we figure that should be a city by city thing?  You list it the way you want it, we list it the way we do.  We won’t ship anything you can’t process, you don’t take anything you don’t want.”

 

“Smugglers?”  This from Three Rivers.

 

Jax shrugs.  “No one’s gettin’ in here without a delivery permit.  Rest of you said you’ve got security.  I don’t see how we can keep out a determined smuggler, and it’s probably only a matter of time before some enterprising soul makes an attempt at it, but I’m not too worried.”

 

“Well, of course you aren’t,” Madge protests.  “You probably had the corner on the trade when California was still a bustling center of illicit industry!”

 

Jax shakes his head and doesn’t smile.  “We didn’t deal in that shit, Madge.  We kept it out of Charming.  That was at the heart of a lot of what the Sons stood for here.”  And before Three Rivers can pick at his semantics, Jax adds, “Bud doesn’t count.  Never has. Never will.”

 

“Fine, then.  It’s settled.  Anything else we want to write up for regulation?”

 

Since everyone—even Henry—had agreed that alcohol was a necessity, not a luxury, there doesn’t seem to be anything else to discuss on that score, and since it’s already midday, Jax moves to adjourn for a long lunch and come back to finalize a few things from the day before.

 

Everyone agrees, and for a rare change, they all decide to make the trek to Miriam’s.  Jax excuses himself, pleading errands, but by the knowing wink Madge gives him, she, at least, isn’t buying it.

 

Technically, it’s not a date.  For it to be an actual date, Dean would have had to have known about it beforehand.

 

Like by Jax asking him.  Or sending him a note.  Or a messenger. 

 

Or fucking smoke signals.

  
No, Jax was planning on swinging by the hospital and seeing if Dean wanted to get some lunch in the café there.  He didn’t figure he’d have much chance getting his lover out of St. Thomas, and anyway, a public venue is probably best for the way the conversation is likely to go.

 

Sighing, Jax hits the head and then heads out the door, foregoing his brain bucket for the short ride to the hospital, which passes without particular incident.

  
He waves to Dan and Jenny Jett, who smile back a little wanly but wave nevertheless.  Still in deep mourning over the loss of their newborn, the couple hasn’t been seen out much, and Jax makes a mental note to swing by their grocery tomorrow and see how they’re doing. 

 

Jax passes Reverend Jurgess on the way through the hospital’s front doors, pauses to ask after his congregation and see if he needs anymore help with re-roofing the church.

                     
“No, sir, that young Mr. Hawkes is quite a worker.  He’s got a half-dozen kids from the Hostel learning the trade and keeping their noses clean.  He’s a godsend.”

 

It takes Jax a second to realize the Reverend’s talking about Reno, but when the penny drops, he has to withhold a snort.  He’d lay even odds that the words “god” and Reno had never been put in such close proximity before, unless it was “that goddamn Reno.”

 

“I’m glad it’s working out for you, Reverend.  You let me know if you need anything else, alright?”

 

“Well, now that you mention it, there is one other thing.”

 

Silently hoping the minister doesn’t spend too long on his request, Jax listens as Pastor Jurgess fills Jax in on one of the newer members of his Lutheran congregation, a young man who’d come to Charming only a few weeks ago but who had already made an impression.

 

A bad one.

 

“Lucas isn’t a bad boy at heart, I don’t think.  He’s just been beaten down by the world, you know?”

 

Jax does know.  Charming’s been a refuge for the world’s lost kids for a long time.  He also knows that it’s no excuse.

 

He says as much.

  
“Well, no, of course Lucas needs to learn to get along better. It’s just… I think he had some experiences on his travels that made him…different…than the other boys.  He’s got a confidence not natural for one his age, and other boys—weak ones—are attracted to him like moths to a candle flame.”

 

“Which boys?” 

“Well, D.J., for one.  Do you know him?”

 

Jax nods.  “Yeah, he’s had some trouble before now.”

 

“Yes, I’ve heard.  Rhett McCabe, too.”

 

“Louisa’s boy?”  That’s news to Jax.  Louisa McCabe is one of Charming’s original residents.  He’d known Rhett since the boy was no higher than Jax’s belt buckle.

 

“Mm-hm.  I think it’s just typical teenage rebellion with him.  Seems he might appreciate a rescue, in fact.  He’s in over his head with Lucas and D.J.  Those two are—“

 

“Trouble,” Jax finishes, voice low. “We’ll take care of it, Padre.  And thanks.”

 

Pastor Jurgess shakes his head and smiles.  “No thanks necessary, Jax.  Just doing the Lord’s work.”

 

Jax takes his leave and heads into the hospital, glancing at the clock over the reception desk and cursing the lost time.  He’d hoped to have more to spend with Dean.  Assuming Dean’s available.  Or conscious.

 

Still, Jax delays seeking out his lover, telling himself calling Ope about Lucas, et al, is important.  Phone call finished, though, Jax admits he’s a little nervous, which is ridiculous.

  
He had his cock up Dean’s ass a few days ago.  It’s not like they’re strangers.

 

But it feels that way, Jax thinks, taking the stairs two at a time to Ward Three, where Sarah had told him he’d find Dean.  He expects to find Dean hunched over the bed of a terminal patient.

  
What he doesn’t expect is that he’ll recognize the patient.

 

Eli Elgin had been Charming’s eccentric old man since before Jax had been born, at least from the stories he’d heard growing up.  He’d known the man had to be ancient, but Eli always seemed spryly self-sufficient, like he was a part of the town that would go on as long as she did.

 

By the blue tint to his thin, age-spotted skin, Eli doesn’t have much longer, though, and Jax can tell that Dean isn’t working on keeping the old man with them, just keeping Eli company until he passes.

 

Without saying anything, Jax pulls a second chair from the room across the hall and sits down next to Dean.

 

“Hale brought him in an hour ago.  Found him lying on the shoulder of Westbury, not too far from Corona.  Tara thinks it was a massive stroke.  Nothing she can do for him except keep him comfortable.” 

 

Dean explains all this in a husky, death-room hush, which Jax is a little ashamed to find makes him half-hard.

 

It’s been a long time since Dean whispered filthy words in Jax’s ear.  At least, it _feels_ like a long time.

“You want some lunch?” Jax asks.  “I’ll sit with Eli while you grab something.”

 

Dean shrugs indifferently.  “Maybe later.  I’d rather stay.”

 

Jax looks at Dean’s profile, then, searching what he can see of his lover’s face for signs of what Dean’s thinking.  But Dean’s calmness of expression betrays nothing of what’s going on inside him, and Jax hesitates, wondering if he should use a little of God’s gift to see if he can’t find out what’s going on with him.

 

He’s made it a point never to use his gift on Dean.  Though Dean had never expressly forbidden it—they’d never actually talked about it at all—Jax had always thought it would be at best an abuse of his power and at worst a violation of Dean’s trust.

  
Frustrated by Dean’s apparent inaccessibility, though, by the mask he seems to be wearing all the time these days, Jax is tempted to push past Dean’s barriers and see what he can dig out.

 

Just as he’s about to give in to that temptation, Dean turns his head and looks at Jax full on, a slow flame in his eyes burning away his Zen-like expression, replacing it with desire as clear as a signal flare and just as bright.

 

“It’s good to see you,” Dean says, and Jax nods, too caught up in what Dean’s eyes are suggesting to

formulate a coherent verbal response.

 

He can only hope his own eyes are sending the same message back.

 

That message is, “Fuck yes!”

 

It might be growing warm in the room—hell, the whole place might be on fire, if Jax’s skin is any indication—when a rattling breath from the bed douses their passion and brings their heads around as if on synchronized swivels to watch Eli struggle through one breath, two, the motion of his chest slowing, the air wheezing out of him with a painful, constrictive sound.

 

Dean stands, leans over the old man, puts a hand to his cheek.  The rattle eases, the wheezing changes to the subtle hiss as of air from a tire.

 

Then Eli’s chest stops moving altogether and he’s gone.

 

Jax has seen a lot of men die—good men, bad men.  Men crushed under eighteen wheels or flayed open by a stretch of asphalt.  Men gunned down, strung up, dripping blood and viscera.

 

Once, he’d watched a man go up in a pillar of flame.

  
That man is draping Eli’s hands across his chest, smoothing his thin, grey hair back off of his forehead.

 

When Dean finishes his work, he turns toward Jax but doesn’t take the step required to put them chest to chest, doesn’t close the gap between them.

 

Jax wants to.  Wants to hold Dean, suck the breath from his mouth, whisper words of life and hope in his ear.

 

He doesn’t do any of that, though, and Dean nods, just the tiniest dip of his chin, as though Jax has made some decision Dean was half-expecting.

 

Then he says, still quiet, though Eli’s rest is of the kind that can never be disturbed, “I’ll get Tara for the death certificate.”

 

When Dean’s almost out the door, Jax asks, “Are you coming to dinner tonight?”  Spaghetti night at the clubhouse is a tradition of the Sons.  Dean’s always invited.

 

“If I can,” he answers, noncommittal, the same neutrality in his face that Jax had seen there before.

 

For a crazy long moment, he thinks about kidnapping Dean, dragging him down the stairs to the chapel, locking the door behind them, and spreading Dean wide open on the narrow little altar up front just to see if he can bring the heat back into his lover’s eyes.

 

Shaking off the image, Jax says, “I hope you can,” putting as much as he can manage into the four simple words.

 

Then Dean’s gone, and Jax follows him as far as the nurse’s station before carrying on to the stairs and then down to the lobby and out into sunshine and a clear blue sky that seems to mock Jax for his own lack of clarity.

 

Not really hungry, Jax skips Miriam’s in favor of swinging by the Hostel and getting Lou’s take on D.J.’s most recent behavior. 

 

“Caught him sneaking out a couple nights ago.  Gave him his second warning.  If we have to tell him again, he’s out of here.  Hale says he’d go into the work program, in that case.”

 

Charming doesn’t have a jail, not anymore.  For one thing, they can’t afford unproductive citizens.  For another thing, it hadn’t seemed to Jax from his own time behind bars that there’s anything much to learn in jail except how to be a better criminal.  Rather than perpetuate a broken system, Hale, Jax, and the Town Council had decided a better course of action for law-breakers was a kind of work release program, wherein those found guilty of a crime against the community were sentenced to a certain number of hours of work around that community.

 

The work was supervised by Lloyd Grady, ex-demon-hunter and old friend of Dean’s father.  His even temper and steady trigger finger made him the ideal candidate for the job, and he seemed to enjoy it despite the occasional tedium of overseeing the three- or four-person “punitive labor crew” they’d have at any one time.

 

When the laborers weren’t putting in their hours, they were living in a group home supervised by three of Hale’s deputies-in-training.

 

So far, it had proved a pretty good system.

  
They’d never had to put a teenager into PL before, but Jax guesses it was bound to happen sooner or later, what with all the broken kids they’ve had coming through in the past couple of years.

 

Hell, if Sam hadn’t had Dean, he’d have probably ended up in PL already, Jax thinks, watching the kid now as he helps Stacy fold laundry.

 

“Any idea if he’s snuck out before?”  Jax tries to keep any note of accusation out of his voice. 

 

Technically, Lou’s in charge of the Hostel, but really, no one expects the kids who live there to need a lot of handling.  Mostly, the sixteen-to-nineteen crowd takes care of itself, and with the exception of D.J., the kids who come through the Hostel have always made close connections, a latter day family unit Jax has always admired.

 

Lou shakes his head.  “I don’t know.  Seems like he knew the way, though.  I only caught him because he dropped his flashlight.  He’s been crawling out through a cellar window that’s been boarded up.  He worked the board loose and then just sort of leaned it in the window?  It’s my fault for not checking the windows more carefully.”

 

“It’s a big place, Lou, and you didn’t have any reason to think he’d be breaking curfew.”

 

“Should’ve guessed, though.  He’s been hanging out with this new kid—“

 

“Lucas Felter, right?  Yeah, I heard.  We’re on it.  Don’t beat yourself up over this, Lou.  It’s not your fault.  D.J.’s just one of those guys who’s got to learn the hard way.”

 

“I guess,” Lou answers, but he doesn’t sound convinced, and Jax suspects he’ll be feeling guilty for a good long time.  Clapping the kid on the shoulder, Jax says, “Take it easy, man,” and heads out, tossing around scenarios in his head to explain where D.J., Lucas, and Rhett might be going and what they might be doing during their late-night, illicit rendezvous.

 

Only one way to find out.

 

He calls Ope on the walkie, gives him the code for the secure command channel, relays what he’s thinking, knowing Ope’s already got some guys in place by now to watch the three boys.

 

Ope thanks Jax for the intel and says, “We’ve got a problem.”

 

“Yeah,” Jax answers, swinging his leg over his bike, “You got some time to talk tonight after dinner?”

  
Jax had been hoping to maybe get Dean alone—assuming Dean showed up to dinner—spend some time up on the roof talking things through.  That’s going to have to take a backseat to this other thing, though.

 

“Yeah.  See ya then.”

 

“See ya, Ope,” Jax responds, then turns the walkie back to the general comm. line.

 

Back at the club, the delegates are waiting for him, ranged around the table in various attitudes of repose.  No one seems particularly impatient with his tardiness, not even Austin, who just sits up a little straighter in his chair when Jax sits down at the head of the table.

 

“So, any revisions of yesterday’s agreements?”

 

The rest of the afternoon is a blur of boring details.

 

The only bright spot is the promise of Bobby’s spaghetti and Dean’s company, which Jax tries not to set his hopes on, since Dean hadn’t exactly sounded enthusiastic about coming. 

 

Five o’clock rolls around, Jax adjourns the delegates and invites them out to the yard, where Sack is waiting to keep them out of the sweetbutts’ hair so they can get the rec area ready for dinner.

 

Jax approaches him a little ahead of the others and says under his breath, “Anything?”

 

Sack shoots a warning glance at the group rapidly closing on them.  “Later,” he answers out of the corner of his mouth.  “I talked to Ope already.”

  
Jax slaps him on the arm and turns a hearty smile to the waiting delegates.  “Sack here is offering motorcycle tours of Charming.  If you don’t want to ride behind him, you can borrow a bike if you can handle it, or you’re welcome to hang out with Rita—“ who’d pulled into the lot as if on cue—“who’s happy to answer any questions you might have about life in Charming, California, from a woman’s perspective.”

 

“Dinner’ll be on at 6:30.  I’ll leave you in their capable hands.  Any problems, let them know.  They can get in touch with me.”

 

Jax touches the walkie at his waist.

 

He doesn’t have plans to be anywhere else, actually, but he needs a break from them.  He spends the ensuing time with Bobby, Piney, Chibs, and the girls, who are looking especially beautiful all dolled up for the special occasion.

 

The clubhouse smells of Bobby’s secret spaghetti sauce, heady odors of garlic and oregano and tomatoes filling the big, dim space.  It smells like home, and for a second Jax forgets that they’ll have new people at the table, that it’s not just the Sons and their crew.

 

Forgets that Dean might not be there at all.

 

Then the outer door opens, Sack leading the delegates in, and Jax takes up the host role, seating the delegates amongst the club members, missing Juice and Dean, who isn’t there, and wishing he didn’t have to act like everything is just fine.

 

Act he does, though, through the fine meal, which he eats despite his unnamed anxiety, and through dessert—Rita’s homemade double-Dutch apple pie.  Through countless anecdotes about club exploits and several stories of varying interest from the delegates.  Madge shares a tall tale about a rabid raccoon at the VFW post that has them all laughing until their eyes water.

 

The laughter in the wake of her words is cut short by the shrill ringing of the landline and the simultaneous squawk of every walkie at the table.  J.C. answers the phone—she’s nearest the bar—and looks at Jax, eyes grave.

 

He’s wishing he hadn’t eaten any dinner at all as it flips in his stomach, making him immediately queasy.

 

Taking the phone and a deep breath, Jax says, “Yeah.”

 

The receiver’s barely in the cradle when Jax barks, “St. Thomas,” to Ope, who he trusts to gather the crew, and orders Sack in the same breath to see that the delegates make it back to their house when they’re finished.

 

Then he’s jogging down the hall toward his bike, heedless of Ope’s shouting, “Jax!  Wait!” intent on getting to the hospital to be there for Juice, who’s dying.  He knows the others will be right behind him once the delegates have been squared away, but Juice can’t die without a Son by his side.  Jax is damned if he’ll let that happen.

 

The ride to the hospital is eight minutes, tops.  He plans to make it in five, only slowing down for the high-population streets:  Palm, Maple, Oak.  The tree streets had filled in first, the earliest survivors who’d arrived having made the neighborhoods once again look lived in.

  
He doesn’t have time to appreciate the neatly kept lawns and native plant gardens cultivated for maximum practical and environmental value.

 

Thankfully, he does have time to slow down for the playground at the corner of Oak and Darien, though, because as he’s approaching the little park, something catches the corner of his eye, a body laying in the grass just on the park side of the sidewalk.  He slows further, squinting in the gloom, trying to make out what’s going on. 

 

Is the kid playing, or is he really hurt?

 

Noticing the drift of his front tire, Jax straightens her out and turns his eyes back to the road, only to be struck across the chest and hurled backward off the bike by momentum and the force of the blow.

  
He lands hard but manages to keep his head from striking the pavement, a good thing, since he’s not wearing a helmet, in too much of a hurry to bother putting it on.  The wind has been knocked out of him, and he’s dazed, but the pain—there’s always pain—hasn’t set in past the shock yet, and he thinks he’ll be okay if he can only get on his feet.

 

A motion to his right brings his head around in time to see something aimed at his face, and Jax doesn’t duck fast enough, catches a glancing strike to his temple, dazing him.  He rolls and comes up hard against a pair of skinny legs in torn denim and big construction boots.  Following the legs upward, he makes out the blurry features of a kid, maybe the one who’d been on the grass.

 

With the clarity that often comes just that much too late, Jax realizes he’s been ambushed, but even as he starts to get his hands under him, a boot strikes his ribs, driving what breath he’d managed to recover right out of him.

 

Wheezing, gasping out a curse, Jax tries again to rise, and this time the bat—it’s got to be a bat or a two-by-four—comes down across his shoulders, dropping him flat and driving his chin into the pavement.  He bites his tongue and pain explodes through his mouth, blood spewing across the big boots as he coughs and shouts.

 

A third blow and then a fourth, Jax fighting with everything he’s got to protect his head and trying to rise, knowing if they knock him out, they’ll kill him for sure.

 

He feels a rib give under the crack of the bat, feels something low in his back blaze hot and hard as a boot lands a solid body blow, coughs blood and makes it to his knees only to have the bat come out of the grey air in a killing arc.

 

His last clear thought before it strikes his left cheek is, “Don’t get dead.”

_*****_

_Since God never gave us a manual to explain our limits, I figure it’s up to us to set the standard.  We have to do what we can—all we can—with what we have.  Nothing else is good enough, whether it’s God’s gifts or our own we’re talking about._ (Acts of the Sons 26:21-23)

 

After Dean makes arrangements for Eli with Morton and Morton, the only operating funeral home in Charming, he thinks about working on Juice again, but he can feel thin spots in his strength, a certain slurring of his speech a sure sign that he’s pushed too far too often lately.

 

So instead of spending the afternoon cooped up in the hospital, Dean heads to the Hostel to find Sam.  Sam’s there with Lou, working on knife-throwing in the back yard, a couple of the other kids looking on, including, Dean’s surprised to see, D.J.

 

D.J.’s grimacing like he’s trying to pass a cantaloupe, but he’s there nevertheless.  Dean might wonder if the kid is trying to steal a knife or maybe shiv Sam except that he’s keeping a good distance, leaning against an outbuilding halfway back in the yard, well away from Sam’s target or the spot where he stands to throw, Lou nearby and just behind keeping a sharp eye on Sam and the knives.

 

“You’re anticipating,” Dean says, coming up from behind as Sam lets loose a knife.  He’s got the arc and force, but his aim is just a little off.

  
The knife strikes blade-first but misses the center by a good four inches.

 

Dean picks up another of the knives and demonstrates the moment of release and the importance of follow-through.

  
Sam nods earnestly, tongue between his teeth, and tries again.  His expression is so familiar that it makes Dean’s chest hurt, remembering another twelve-year-old Sam and throwing lessons in the weed-choked back lot of whatever motel they’d happened to be staying in at the time.

 

Shaking off the bittersweet feeling, Dean concentrates on the here and now, and when the kid gets it two inches closer to the center, he gives him a high five and says, “Alright!  Much better.  Throw the last two for practice and then clean up.  I thought we could hit the Reservoir for some hunting.”

 

Since “hunting” actually means a glorified game of paintball under the amused eyes of the Reservoir’s snipers, Sam lets out an enthusiastic whoop and starts towards the target for the knives he’s already thrown.

 

“Hey, slow down, champ.  Throw those two first.”

 

Under Dean’s critical eye, Sam does a pretty decent job, and soon they’ve stowed the knives in the Hostel’s safe and hit the road in the Impala.  Windows down, warm air blowing in, Metallica blasting on the tape deck, Dean feels himself relaxing, feels the tension in his shoulders and spine seeping away, senses energy he hasn’t had in a long time pouring back in.

 

He feels damn good.

 

An hour and a half later, bruised, spattered in fat splats of Day-Glo yellow, and laughing breathlessly, Dean throws himself down on the warm bank of the Reservoir and stoically awaits his fate.

 

“Bang!  You’re dead!” 

Staring down the barrel of Sam’s Airsoft AK, Dean laughs and says, “I surrender.”

 

Sam drops beside Dean with the enviable ease of a kid, carefully checks the safety on the gun, and then stretches out next to Dean, fingers interlocked under his head, matching Dean’s pose.

 

“How’s Juice?” Sam asks at last, still staring skyward.

 

“The same,” Dean answers.

 

“You think he’s gonna get better?”

 

“I don’t know, Sam.  He’s pretty sick.”

 

“You made _me_ better.”

 

“I know, kid.  But this time’s different.”

 

“How?”

 

 _Wish I knew_ , Dean thinks.  Aloud, he says only, “I’m working on it.”

 

Sam seems to accept that answer, even if Dean thinks it sounded pretty lame.

 

“He misses you.”

 

Dean knows the kid doesn’t mean Juice, but he’s tempted to pretend like he’s confused.  He’s not sure he’s ready for relationship advice from a twelve year old.

  
Then again…

 

“Yeah?  And how do you know that?”

 

“He calls me, like, every twelve hours.”

 

Dean snorts his disbelief and Sam shifts a little impatiently, wiggling deeper into the grassy bank.

 

“Okay, but at least once a day.  Seriously, he acts like he has questions about the Hostel and D.J. and whatever, but I know he really wants to ask about you.”

 

Sometimes, Dean forgets that Sam carries a hell of a lot more living than his twelve years should account for, and then there are times like this when he wishes the kid didn’t sound so grown up.

 

Reminds him of himself at that age.  Sans the guns, of course.

 

(Well, mostly.  And he’s sworn Sam to secrecy about _that_ one.)

 

“And?”

 

Sam’s shrug is just a blur of motion and the sound of grass against sweatshirt, but Dean knows what it means.

Letting out a breath, he sits up and stares hard out over the water.  “I’m not the one making this hard,” he says, wondering if he should just forget about it.  Sam doesn’t need to hear this shit.

 

“You’re the one who left,” the kid points out reasonably.

 

“It’s…complicated.”

 

Sam’s turn to snort.  “Bullshit.  Everyone knows you two belong together.  Just ‘cause you can’t get your head out of your ass doesn’t mean you have to ruin it for the rest of us.”

 

Dean turns to look at him.  Sam’s eyes are scrunched up against the sun overhead, his mouth twisted into a sour smirk.

 

“What?”

 

“Jax.  And you.  Duh.  Obviously, you’re supposed to be together.  When you aren’t, it, I don’t know,” this accompanied by a wild series of indefinite hand gestures, “It screws things up ‘s all.  You can’t feel it?”

 

Since Dean’s felt like his world is tilted slightly off its axis for the past four days, he can’t very well deny the kid’s observation.  Still, he has to put up a token protest.

  
“C’mon.  You sayin’ it’s part of God’s plan that Jax and me are—“

 

The kid’s vigorous, completely sincere nodding sends a spike of alarm through Dean.

 

“Sam, you didn’t… _see_ something, did you?”

 

Another shrug, this one definitely noncommittal.

 

“Sam,” Dean warns, voice going low.

 

“Okay, okay.  Yeah, so I did, alright.  Just a flash, hardly anything.  It was you and Jax together…in beds.”

 

Dean’s alarm changes rapidly to embarrassment and then to outrage.  Who the hell does God think he is, giving the kid that particular show?

 

“You mean we were—“ Dean fills the sentence in with a universal motion.

  
“No!  Ew, gross!  _Beds_ , Dean.  Like, hospital beds.”

 

Maybe it’s a measure of how their lives together have gone thus far, but Dean isn’t as alarmed by this image as he was of the earlier one. 

 

“Okay, and…?”

 

“That’s it.  Just you and Jax in hospital beds.  Or something.”

 

“Were we conscious?”

Sam sits up, gives Dean an annoyed look, and shrugs.  “I don’t know.  Yeah?  No?  Look, it’s not like it comes with close captioning, man.  I told you what I saw.”

 

“Okay, okay,” Dean placates, holding up his palms in mock-surrender.  “Don’t shoot.”

 

“You’ve got yellow gunk in your hair,” Sam observes, rising lithely to his feet.  Dean takes a little longer to get up, but he manages it, sketching a wave at their hidden observers before heading back to the car.

 

In the rearview, he sees the streak of yellow at his left temple where he’d caught some blow-back off a tree trunk.

 

“You were aiming for the head,” Dean says, not accusing, just observing.

 

“Only way to put down Freaks,” Sam explains solemnly and then loses it, laughing wild in the seat beside Dean until Dean can’t help but chuckle, too.

 

After he drops Sam off at the Hostel with a promise of ice cream at Miriam’s sometime soon, Dean idles at the curb just down the block, considering his options for the day.

 

He feels good—loose and easy in his skin.  It was nice to just spend some time with the kid, run around, shoot at shit.

 

But the tug of responsibility is unavoidable as gravity, and with a sigh, he does a three-point turn and heads toward St. Thomas to give Juice another go.

 

He’ll probably only get a nosebleed and a headache for his trouble, but he’s got to try.  It’s Juice.

 

And Juice is a brother, despite what Dean said to Jax before about not being a Son, not belonging.

 

Doesn’t matter that he hasn’t got a cut or a vote.

 

Of course, it might’ve been good if Dean had figured that out before he’d moved to Tupper Street.

 

Still, he’s not admitting he’s wrong.

  
Dean’s not wrong.  Jax has face to save now along with a world to rebuild.  If it makes it a little easier for people to accept Jax’s right to rule, Dean will live in another fucking state, never mind six blocks from the clubhouse.

 

_Priorities._

 

He has to change those priorities again when he arrives to find two orderlies struggling with a skinny kid who’s swearing up a blue streak and saying, “Let me go!  I didn’t do anything!  Get off of me!”

 

“What’s this about?” he asks, approaching carefully, and as the second orderly—Jerry, by his name tag—turns to answer Dean, the kid slips free of him, wrenches his other arm out of the first orderly’s grip, and makes a dash for the emergency exit at the end of the First Ward hallway.

 

“Let him go,” the first orderly says, disgusted.  “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him.  I caught him snooping around the ICU.”

“Huh,” Dean answers, looking at where the kid has disappeared.  “Did you call Hale?”

 

“Nah, but I can,” Jerry answers.  “I think I know the kid.  Reese?  Rick?”  Shrugging, the two orderlies thank Dean for his concern and wander off toward the staff lounge.

 

Just then, raised voices from the isolation wing catch Dean’s attention, and he jogs toward the double doors leading to the hallway where they keep survivors for processing and health screening.  Wendy’s there alone, looking overwhelmed—there are five people, the healthiest of which is emitting a painful wheezing sound that suggests an allergic reaction to one of the required immunizations.  She shoots Dean a pleading look, and he can’t very well walk away.

 

Two hours later, as Dean’s crossing the lobby on the way to the stairs for the ICU, two things happen simultaneously:  He notices that it’s almost dark, later than he thought—and his stomach growls.

  
Reminding him that he’s missed the spaghetti dinner.

_Shit._

 

Wondering if he should call Jax to try to explain himself or just let it go, Dean pauses on the third stair from the top, which is why, when the Code Blue is called, he can tell exactly where it’s coming from.

  
Juice’s room is like a scene from a hospital drama, Tara leaning over the bed, two nurses standing by with IV bags and needles, vital signs monitor piercing the air with its hopeless wail.

 

He sends up a silent, helpless plea, knowing he hasn’t got time to get his hands on Juice, even if he could guarantee some positive result.  _Please_ , he thinks.  _Please_.  Losing Juice would wreck the Sons.  He’s a brother. 

 

 _Please_.

 

“Wait, wait!” Tara calls, holding a hand up to keep the second nurse from injecting something into the IV line.  “I’ve got a pulse.  It’s…steady?”

 

Dean lets out a hard, shaking breath.

 

Sparing a look at the monitor, Tara’s face morphs from confusion to anger.  “Who touched this?  Who reset it?”

 

The nurses look baffled and a little afraid, clearly worried about being blamed even though they’re not responsible.

 

Tara turns toward the door.  “Dean,” she says, like she isn’t quite sure that’s his name, obviously trying to bring her mind back to an off-crisis pace.  “Did you see anyone in the stairwell?”

 

He shakes his head.  “No, but there was a kid sniffing around up here a few minutes ago.  Jerry and another orderly caught him, but he got away from them.  So he’s okay?” Dean adds, nodding at Juice.

  
“He’s fine.  No change.”

 

“Huh.”  Dean says, thinking.

“Mouse!”  Tara says suddenly.

  
Dean searches along the floorboards for some sign of a rodent.

 

“Mouse was here, in the waiting room.  For the club.  They’re having the spaghetti dinner, but she stayed to be here for Juice.  In case.  She was going to call them.”

 

Dean confirms it moments later, finding the petite woman just hanging up the landline at the nurse’s station.

  
“Did you call Jax?”

 

She nods.  “He’s on his way.”

 

Cold snakes through Dean’s veins and he suppresses a shiver of foreboding.  Something’s not right here.

 

Tara rechecks the machine, makes a note on Juice’s chart, and strides from the room, patting Dean on the shoulder as she passes.  “You need more rest,” she notes.

 

Huh.  He hadn’t thought he looked so bad.

 

Resisting the temptation to check a mirror, Dean waits until both nurses have cleared the room and enters, pulling up the chair that had been shoved away during the earlier rush.

 

Almost reluctantly, afraid of failure, of feeling the kid slipping away, Dean reaches out a hand and puts it on Juice’s near shoulder.  The flesh is warm and solid, the artificial rise and fall of his chest somehow comforting. Closing his eyes, Dean takes a deep breath and pictures Juice at the pool table, bending over a shot, wicked smile on his face aimed at Jax, who’s just made a comment about Juice’s ass.

 

He sees Juice with J.C. at the bar, singing at the top of their voices to Seger on the jukebox.

 

Juice explaining something about computers to Sam.

 

Juice riding out of the yard on his bike for the milk run to Fresno.

 

 _Please_.

 

“Dean!”

 

Startling like he’s just been struck by lightning, Dean yanks his hand away from Juice and rises, the chair pushed back by his legs squealing on the polished floor.

  
Wendy is in the doorway, eyes alarmed, tearful.  “It’s Jax.”

 

Lightning replaced by the sudden thundering of his heart, Dean is past her and halfway down the hall, her frantic, “ER!” catching up with him as he hits the stairwell, taking them two at a time, swinging himself on the post at the bottom, slingshotting through the first floor door, only slowing when he sees the press of people ahead of him, Ope and Chibs and Sack, Bobby and Piney, Rita and the sweetbutts.

 

“What happened?  Where is he?” Dean asks, rushing them, Ope grabbing him to stop him from plunging through the “No Entry Beyond This Point” doors.  “What happened?” he asks again, tearing away from the bigger man.

 

“Ambush,” Ope says shortly, lips compressed.

 

“I’ve got to—“

 

“Dean,” Ope says, low, the tone of his voice stopping Dean in his tracks, swaying with the effort to stand still.

 

Dean doesn’t want to look at Ope’s face, doesn’t want to see the truth the other man is trying to convey.

  
“No,” he answers, voice hoarse, not denial, just refusal.  He’s lost enough.  He’s not giving up Jax, too.

 

They must see the resolution on his face, because the Sons step back, parting to let him through, and then he’s past the forbidden point, Tara’s cool voice shaking as she orders 30 ccs of something Dean doesn’t catch.

 

“Dean, you can’t—“ she starts, but Dean freezes an advancing orderly with a single look, and one by one the people between him and his lover step back, all except Tara, who holds her ground, one finger pressed to the pulse-point at Jax’s throat, the other, bloodied, held away from his too-still chest.

 

“Dean, he’s—“  
  


“No.”

 

Anguish in her face, Tara nods, a tear slipping free as she makes a point of looking at the clock on the wall over the next bed over.  Time of death.

 

“No,” he says again, and she steps away from Jax, hand hovering uncertainly, like she’d touch him but for his lover’s blood staining her gloves.

 

Jax’s face is unrecognizable.  Bloodied, the flesh of his left cheek torn, lips swollen, eyes too.  He looks like an effigy made by an angry witch.  The waxen cast of his skin, the unnatural stillness of his eyes beneath their smudged lids.

 

Dean’s seen enough of death to know it when he’s staring at it, but this time, it’s wearing a beloved face, and he just can’t have it.

  
He’s done.

 

Hesitating no more, despite that there isn’t an unmarred place to put his hands, Dean holds Jax by the balls of his shoulders and lifts him away from the bed.  A noise behind him, of surprise or grief or both, is lost in the rush of power Dean feels upon contact with Jax’s broken body.

 

No breathing exercise is going to gentle the roar of energy pouring out of him, narrowing his vision and sending shooting black streamers across it.  Like running full out into the teeth of the wind, Dean can’t breathe except in choking gulps, but he won’t let go, can’t stop the torrent of energy as it empties out of him.

 

Vaguely, he hears a voice he knows saying, “Dean, stop.  Stop,” but it’s distant, like a memory filtered through the haze of waking. 

 

Something brushes his wrist, though, and that’s enough to focus his vision, enough at least to see a single, beautiful blue eye staring back at him.

 

“Hey,” he might say, but the thrumming pulse of power is too much for him to feel the words or really hear them, either.

  
“Don’t,” he does hear, clearly, despite that it sounds like Jax’s been gargling glass.  “Don’t—“

 

Jax struggles painfully with the next word, but Dean doesn’t need to hear it.

 

“Shut up,” he says, or thinks he does.  His eyes blurring, an ever-closing scope honing his vision down to a tunnel, at the end of which is only that one blue eye, wide and pleading.  “If you never want me to touch you again after this, alright, but I’m laying hands on you now,” he promises and then closes his eyes to concentrate every last ounce of energy.

 

Beneath him, Jax’s body begins to thrash, and from his mouth come hissing words, but Dean is too far gone down the tunnel now, and he doesn’t hear anything but white noise and a welcoming roar, like waves closing over his head.

 

*****

 

 _The world is harder to survive when there are things you aren’t willing to give up.  If you don’t have anything to hang onto, it’s easier to let go._ (The Acts of the Sons 33:13-15)

 

The world comes into focus with every careful inhale and fades away to fuzzy whiteness when he lets out his breath, so he plays a game for awhile of trying to hold it in, to keep his one good eye clear long enough to figure out where he is, who he is.  If there’s anyone beside him, waiting for him to wake up.

 

Jax knows in the primitive part of his brain that if it’s the end, he’ll be alone.  You’re always alone at the end, no matter how many worried faces bend to hear you breathing.

 

This is another kind of aloneness, though, not the final solitude but something more, some aching gape that he understands without articulating will be too painful to remember digging open.

 

Then...

 

 _Dean_.

 

He inhales too hard, chest afire with agony, broken ribs giving a little under the gauze wrapping holding him together, and what comes out is a wheeze, maybe a name.

 

“Hey,” he hears, and the sound levers his eye open despite the tearing anguish of the effort, brings head around to see that he’s not alone at all.

 

Dean’s in the next bed, indistinct at the edges but definitely Dean.

 

Jax would smile if he could move his lips more than a quarter-inch.  Dry tongue gingerly poking at the stitches inside his lip and at the edge of his mouth, Jax tries nodding instead, gets only as far as the seizing pain in his cheekbone lets him.

 

“You look like shit,” Dean says, and Jax winces through a laugh despite the cost in unforgiving agony.

 

“Guess I’m going to have to work on my cosmetic surgery mojo next,” he continues.  His voice is rough, like he’s been screaming or choking, low and raspy and painful and beautiful to hear.  Jax feels tears pooling in his one good eye and blinks furiously, refusing to let them fall at their own pace.

  
He will not cry.

 

“Hey, doc,” Dean says next, which means someone—probably Tara—has come in, but Jax refuses to turn away from Dean.  It would take too much energy, for one thing, and for another, Jax is a little afraid that if he lets Dean out of his sight, Jax’s next blink will make him disappear altogether.

  
It’s ridiculous, the cold fear squeezing his heart, but there it is.

 

Tara comes around between them to shine a light in Jax’s eye, gently lift the lid of the other, and to listen to his heart.  When she finishes, she says, “Can you tell me your name?”

 

Jax tries, but his tongue feels fat and hot in his mouth, sticking to his swollen lips.  Tara must see his frustration, for her hand comes into view holding a straw, which he takes clumsily between his lips.  Sipping is a draining exercise, but the cold trickle of water into his mouth and down his throat almost makes him tear up again, it’s so good.

Fuck, but he hurts.

 

He says as much after identifying himself and the current President of the United States—Tara’s bedside manner was definitely warped by the Apocalypse.

 

“Do you want more pain meds?” she asks then, and Jax says, “Hell, yeah.”

 

From the next bed comes Dean’s knowing laugh, warm and rough.  Jax wants to crawl across the space between them and into bed with Dean.

 

Right now, that’s as likely as Dean naming himself the Pope of Charming, California, though, so he settles on waiting for Tara to move to the other side of the bed, where the IV drip is parked, and then looking his fill at Dean, who is finally coming into sharper focus as Jax revives.

 

“You stupid fuck,” he says, though his mouth is so messed up, it sounds like something else entirely.

 

Dean gets it, though, snorting and answering, “Whatever.”

 

“He’s not wrong,” Tara notes from the other side of the bed.  “You almost died.  Both of you.”

 

Jax wants to protest that he, at least, wasn’t _trying_ to die, and to point out that the same can’t be said for Dean.  But just then, a warm slurry of numbing comfort works its way to his cheeks and tongue and Jax has to close his eye for just a minute, just until he can see clearly again.

 

*****

 

When he comes to again, it’s dark in the room, the only illumination coming from the partially open curtain on the window beside Dean’s bed.  Jax is still turned toward Dean, and from the blade of clean moonlight lancing across his lover’s face, he can see that the other man is asleep, though he looks dead, the quality of the light leeching color from his skin, making of him a statue, some stone effigy of a fallen knight.

 

Jax snorts, pays for it with a dull pain through his ribcage, and wonders how much morphine, exactly, he’s gotten.

  
Knights and effigies.  _Christ._

 

He feels pressed, like a giant hand is pushing him gently but inexorably into the mattress, and Jax supposes he should be alarmed, but that sense, too, is muffled. If he can’t feel his ribs grinding their broken ends together or the throbbing ache of his fractured cheekbone, he can’t feel other things, either.

  
Like alarm.  Or worry.  Or really anything except a floating detachment from the world, tethered only by the moon-carved lines of Dean’s face in sleep. 

 

Jax lets his eye flutter shut, hoping he’ll dream of Dean warm and well.

 

*****

 

If he dreams at all, Jax doesn’t remember it.

He thinks it’s midmorning, judging by the yellow light spilling through the open curtain, when he wakes up again.

 

Dean is sitting up reading a muscle car magazine, the Mustang on the cover the worse for several years’ wear.  Probably, Dean’s read it a hundred times, but maybe not.  Sometimes the guys who go on milk runs bring other things home, too.

 

New reading material is always in demand.  The Charming Public Library can only offer so much.

 

Thinking of milk runs reminds Jax of Juice, and he manages to say the name loudly and clearly enough that Dean puts down the magazine and turns toward Jax.

 

“Hey, you’re up.  Good.”  He presses the call button on his bed rail.  “How do you feel?”

 

Jax won’t be put off, though.  “Juice?”

 

Dean nods abstractly, like he’s trying to think how to word something, and Jax braces himself for the worst.

 

“He’s okay.  Better.  He woke up about an hour before you did the first time.  He can’t talk just yet—not clearly—and there might be some mobility issues.  Doctor McCrory will run some tests when Juice is stronger.  But for now, it’s better than they’d expected, I guess.  Tara can fill you in,” he adds, nodding toward the door.

  
It takes a little less effort than before, though it costs just as much in pain, for Jax to turn his head toward the other side of the bed.  He realizes as he does so that he’s catching glimpses of light through his swollen left eye. 

 

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Tara says, smiling.  It’s a tired, pale shadow of smiles he remembers from their early days, but it’s genuine and warm, and Jax finds he’s glad to have put it there.  “How’s your pain level?”

 

Jax says, “Uh…four?”

 

She raises an eyebrow and he amends it to, “Six.  Maybe seven.”

 

“Think you’re up for managing your own levels?”

 

“Sure,” he slurs, his tongue ungainly, lips huge and strange.

 

“The good news is that Dean’s...skills…healed the brain trauma and internal bleeding—you had a punctured lung and damage to both kidneys.  No surgery.  The bad news is that he left us before he could heal your fractures and lacerations.  Those you’re going to have to work through on your own.”

 

“Left us?”  Jax turns his head, again with what feels like impossible effort, toward Dean.

  
Predictably, Dean shrugs.  “Just for a second.  Doesn’t count.  Didn’t even see the light.”

 

Jax smirks, or tries to.  He’s pretty sure his lips won’t go that way just yet.

 

“Here,” Tara says, and Jax has to swivel his head once again.  It’s like the world’s slowest tennis match, and he’s always thought tennis was a stupid game when played at the usual speed.

 

“Can you reach this?”

 

Jax sees that she’s used a plastic alligator clip to attach a button to the bedrail.

 

He nods.  “Yeah,” he says at last when he realizes she’s waiting for verbal confirmation.

 

“Try it.”

 

Jax demonstrates his limited reach, and she says, “Good.  It’s got an automatic shut-off, so you can’t overdose.  Try not to use it unless the pain disrupts your sleep or becomes too much, okay?  It’s morphine.  We don’t want you to grow dependent on it.”

 

 _Addicted_ , she doesn’t say, but they all know what she’s talking about.

  
Jax nods solemnly and says, “I’ll be careful.”

 

Tara rests her hand on his shoulder, squeezes until he can feel the heat of her hand through his thin hospital gown.  “It’s good to have you back,” she says, pulling away then and walking to Dean’s bed, where Jax watches her fuss over the other man.

 

“You feeling better?”

 

Dean says, “Sure.  I’m ready to blow this gin joint.”

 

“Right,” Tara laughs, scornful.  “Even if you have made an art out of coming back from the dead, you’re staying at least another day for observation.”

 

“How long has it been?” Jax asks, drawing her eyes to him.  It hadn’t occurred to him to ask before, what with the pain and, well, the _pain_.

 

“You were both out for two days before Dean rejoined us.  You came to for the first time on day three.  It’s day five now.”

 

“Five?”  The force of breath it takes to inflect astonishment costs him a chest full of jagged teeth, and he winces, but he doesn’t want to push the button while Tara’s in the room.

 

She rolls her eyes at his pride and smirks knowingly but says nothing.

 

When she’s out of the room, Dean whistles and shakes his head.  “She’s a pistol.  Must’ve kept you on your toes.”

 

“Yeah, she did that,” Jax agrees, pressing the button and letting his eyes fall shut as relief works its warm way through his veins.  “Hey,” he says a minute—or twenty—later.

 

“Hmm?”  Dean puts down his magazine, waiting.

 

Maybe it’s the morphine or almost dying or some combination of the two, but Jax can’t seem to stop himself from saying then the things they never speak aloud, words they don’t use, terms they’ve never offered.

 

They spill from him like a confession, measured like the morphine drip, slow and steady, words like love and trust and want and need and, god, love.  Love and love and love.

 

Before he’s done, Dean has struggled upright, pushed himself off with visible effort, and managed to stagger as far as Jax’s bed, where he leans, breathing heavily, one hand grasping Jax’s, the other keeping a death-grip on the bedrail.

 

“You’re drunk,” Dean observes in his flannel-over-gravel voice.

 

“Yeah,” Jax whispers.

 

“If I lean over to kiss you, I’ll probably pass out,” Dean admits, which earns a snort of laughter from Jax, which turns into a wince and then a cough as pain tightens his breath into a slicing vise.

 

Dean leans over him and presses the button.  “Go back to sleep,” he murmurs, hand brushing Jax’s chest, feather-light, as he brings it back to the rail and pushes off, careening once more in an unsteady path to his own bed.

 

Jax is out before he can even see if Dean climbs in safely or falls on his ass.

 

*****

 

The next time he awakens, Ope is sitting by the bed, Rita leaning against his shoulders, reading the magazine he’s apparently sharing with her.  It’s an intimate, domestic scene, and it takes Jax a moment to place them, to figure out who they are and what they’re doing in his room.

 

When memory reasserts itself, he says, “Hey,” despite the dryness of his mouth.

 

“Hey,” Ope answers, and Rita leaves him to come to Jax’s side and plant a careful kiss on his forehead.  “It’s good to see you awake,” she says.

  
“How’s Juice?” he asks.  Rita’s eyes skitter to Ope’s; Ope’s mouth makes a hard, thin line.

 

“Ope?”

 

“He’s no better, no worse.  Doctor McCrory thinks there might be some permanent brain damage, but he won’t know for sure for a few days yet.”

 

“He might be able to do physical therapy,” Rita rushes to add.  “The doctor said the brain’s an amazing and mysterious organ.  Could be he makes a full recovery.”

 

“But we shouldn’t get our hopes up,” Ope amends, in a tone that suggests he’s been dampening a lot of hopeful spirits lately.

 

“Hey, Juice is a fighter.  He’ll be alright.”

 

“That’s what I said,” Dean answers from the other bed, and Jax turns his attention to his lover, who’s looking better, color returning, dark smudges under his eyes starting to fade.

 

“How’re you?” Jax asks him, and Dean smiles in a way that makes Jax wish they were alone.

 

“I’m great.  I’d be out of here already if it weren’t for Tara.  She’s—“

 

“Concerned for your health,” Rita interrupts sternly, giving Dean a quelling look.

 

Dean subsides against his pillows, waiting until Rita turns to Ope to mouth, “Slavedriver,” at Jax, who chokes back a snort and regrets it immediately.

  
Fuck, but he hates broken ribs.

 

“What about the guys who did this?” he asks when he can manage to talk between wheezes.

 

“Hale’s got ‘em for now,” Ope answers, surrendering the magazine to Rita and offering her the chair.  He comes to stand beside Jax’s bed, hands in his pockets, eyes hard.

 

“Who are they?”

 

“D.J. from the Hostel.  Rhett McCabe.  And some new kid named Lucas.  D.J. and Lucas are in jail.  We turned Rhett over to his mother—he came to the clubhouse, told us where to find you.  If it hadn’t been for him…”  Ope finishes with a shrug that says nothing and everything at once.

  
Jax raises his hand and Ope grips it, thumb to thumb.  “Good to have you back,” Ope says, closest they come to a declaration, smiling.

 

“Good to be back,” Jax answers, finishing the fraternal formula and letting go.

 

“Rhett say who ordered it?” he asks, picking up where they’d left off.

 

Ope’s smile changes to something ugly and awful and he nods, sharing a look with Dean.

 

Jax turns to look at his lover, whose smile mirrors Ope’s. 

 

“Austin,” Jax says before Dean can, and Dean’s smile widens into a shark’s grin, all teeth and unavoidable intent.

 

“We’re keeping him somewhere else.  Blue’s taken care of it,” Ope explains.

 

Jax laughs, not caring that it’ll leave him breathless after.  “That’s good,” he manages at last, subsiding with a gasp back against the pillows.

 

“Hey, we’re gonna take off, let you get some rest.  Sack and Chibs and the rest want to see you, too, but Tara’s limiting visitors for now.  Next time there’s a window, anyone you want me to send in?”

 

Jax shakes his head.  “I want to see all of ‘em.  Tell Tara it’s a party.” 

 

Rita crows, “Not likely.  That woman is one bitch even I won’t go up against.”

Dean’s laugh echoes hers, and soon they’re all laughing, Jax pressing his side and taking shallow, short breaths.

 

“Get outta here,” he says at last, and they oblige, Rita kissing him on his less-bruised cheek before they go.

 

Alone again, Jax and Dean spend a little time just breathing. 

 

“So this is what alone-time’s like, huh?” Jax says at last, and Dean huffs a laugh. 

 

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” Dean notes.

 

“What _did_ you have in mind?”  He says it quietly, and not just because talking louder makes his ribcage vibrate unpleasantly.  He doesn’t want to fight.  All those things he said when he was stoned out of his mind—he meant them.

 

“I don’t know,” Dean answers, but his tone belies his words.  He does know.

 

Jax pushes.  “C’mon, man.  We’re here.”  Here where they almost died together.  Here with nowhere else to go.

 

“I wanted a life of our own, I guess.  You know…a place that was ours.  Just ours.  And where we wouldn’t be interrupted or bothered or, shit, graded on our performance.”

 

Jax laughs.  “It was just that one time…”

 

“Whatever.  And you need it as much as I do, Jax.  That place is eating you alive.”

 

It might be true, but Jax isn’t ready to hear it.  He shrugs carefully, breathes through the twinge.

 

“It was really that bad for you?”  He’d be more pissed if it weren’t for the fact that the ends of his nerves are all dulled by the drugs.

 

“No,” and it’s vehement and Jax believes him, but—“And yeah.  I guess.  I mean, it’s great, having family.”  Jax ignores the way Dean’s voice cracks on the word, knowing Dean hates that it does.

 

“You guys…I’ve never had that, except with—.  Anyway, it’s great.  But it’s too much sometimes, you know?  It’d be nice to just have a quiet place to go when it gets to be too much.”

 

“You never said anything before.”

 

“Because it’s your house, Jax.  And because until the summit, I figured we could handle it.  And then I saw what happened with Austin, the way he acted because of who you are.  Why invite that shit when we can avoid it?  It’s hard enough, doing what we do, without making more trouble for ourselves.”

 

“Bullshit.”  Forgetting his resolve not to argue—and his broken ribs—Jax raises his voice.  The effect is somewhat muted by the minutes of wheezing agony that follow, but it’s worth it when he finally manages to continue and Dean remains quiet through it.

 

“You’ve never given a rat’s ass what anyone thinks of you or of us.  It’s never bothered you that people know who we are and what we do.  I don’t buy that you suddenly care what an asshole like Austin—an asshole who hired _kids_ to kill me—thinks.  You want to move out for you, fine, but don’t put it on me, don’t say that it’s an us thing when it’s a you thing.”

 

Dean takes a long, steadying breath, and Jax prepares to hear things he doesn’t want to.

 

“Damnit, Jax, will you listen?  I’m _not_ ashamed of us!  I don’t care who knows that you shove your dick up my ass on a regular basis.  It’s got nothing to do with us and everything to do with other people.  What other people think matters, Jax.  It does.  If we were just two guys in love, fine, sure.  But we’re not.  You’re King of the fucking World.  And I’m…Well, I don’t know what I am, but I’m sure as hell not the guy I was when we fucked each other senseless in that church two years ago.  We’ve changed, Jax.  And the world’s changed.  And we either adapt to it or let it roll right over us.  I thought this was a way of us being together without making our relationship fucking public policy.”

 

“You done?” Jax asks after a seething silence of some minutes.

  
“Does it matter?”  Dean’s voice is dull, like he’s given up.

 

“Yeah it matters,” Jax answers, irritated and showing it. 

 

“You gonna change your mind?”  Still with the note of resignation.

 

“No.”

 

“Well, then, what’s left to talk about?”

 

*****

 

The next time Jax wakes up, mouth sticky and gross, bad eye finally open a little, though his vision is still blurry there, Dean is gone, bed empty, blanket smooth.

 

Alarm arcs through him, robs him of breath, until he thinks to press the nurse’s call button, waiting impatiently, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” under his breath.  At last a brunette in pink scrubs appears and asks, “What do you need, Mr. Teller?”

 

“Where’s Dean?”

 

“Mr. Winchester was released this afternoon.  He left word at the desk to call him when you were awake again, but it’s three in the morning.  Would you like to wait?”

 

Selfishly, Jax thinks, _No_ , but aloud, he says, “Yeah, don’t bother him now.”

 

She smiles professionally at him and exits.

 

Having slept so much in the past five—no, make it six—days, Jax isn’t tired anymore, but he doesn’t have the energy or concentration to read the stack of new-used magazines Ope and Rita had left on his bedside tray table. 

 

Instead, he lies there staring up at the ceiling, thinking through what Dean had said, the same old impasse they’d come to, trying to figure out what pisses him off more—that Dean had been feeling left out all the time he was living at the clubhouse and didn’t tell Jax or that Dean thinks he knows better than Jax how to rule Charming and the world.

 

That second consideration brings Jax up short as he turns it over in his head.  He’s never been all that confident in his so-called God-given gift of rule, relying instead on what he’d learned as President of the Sons of Anarchy, on advice from Piney and Bobby, on the words of his father written in a book that’s now half law.  On things he’d talk over with Dean on the roof on those nights when they’d find time to sneak away, share a joint, page through their fathers’ respective legacies and figure things out.

 

They hadn’t done that in a long time, Jax realizes with a start.  Weeks at least, maybe months.

 

Shit, had it been that long?

 

So maybe Dean’s to blame for dropping this on Jax in the middle of the summit, when his attention is otherwise distracted, but the part about him thinking he knows better than Jax…that’s bullshit thinking on Jax’s part.

  
Dean’s always been Jax’s go-to guy.  From day one, when they were practically strangers, Jax had trusted Dean with things about himself he’d shared with virtually no one else, not even Opie.

 

And now Jax is getting pissed at Dean for bargaining on that trust and trying to make a life they can _both_ live, a life that isn’t only about Jax’s past but about making a past of their own to remember?

 

Jax is stubborn, sure, but he’s not a douchebag.  He can see that he’s the one who fucked up here.  He can see it now, when Dean isn’t in the next bed to tell, when he’s instead sleeping alone in a strange house Jax has never even seen the inside of, having just recovered from saving Jax’s life.

 

Okay, so maybe Jax _is_ a douchebag.

 

*****

 

In the next four days, he’s visited by a variety of people, including most of the delegates from the summit, who’d been kept around by uncertainty and the fact that their jobs in Charming weren’t done.  They hadn’t had a chance to finalize the confederacy agreement before Jax had been attacked, and they didn’t relish going home only to have to come back again when Jax was back on his feet.

  
Besides, they’re kind of expecting a spectacle when the Sons finally hand out justice to Austin.

 

“I’ll be out of here in a few days, and we can go over the agreement,” he promises Madge, who shushes him with a swear word and says, “Take your time, Jax.  It’ll keep.”

 

“Yeah, and we’re having tomato sandwiches for lunch at Miriam’s, so it’s all good,” Fallon throws in, smiling slyly.

 

Jax laughs, holding his ribs hard to keep them from shooting pain down his belly and hip.

 

Even Three Rivers shows up, trailed by Chibs, who leans in the doorway, just out of earshot but well within retrieval range if the guy starts hassling Jax.

He surprises Jax, though: “I’m sorry this happened.  And I apologize for any part I might have played in encouraging Austin’s delusions.  While I haven’t always been comfortable with the way you do things, Mr. Teller, I do appreciate the control you have over Charming.  It indicates an order that’s enviable.  I hope you’ll recover and rejoin us quickly.”

 

“Thank you,” Jax answers, shaking the man’s offered hand.

 

Three Rivers nods solemnly and leaves, Chibs following, but before their shadows leave the doorway, Dean is there, hesitating, saying, “Can I come in?”

 

“Sure,” Jax says, suddenly nervous.  He hasn’t seen Dean since their disastrous conversation, and he feels vulnerable and wrong-footed, like he might say something stupid and make everything worse.

 

“How you feeling?”

 

He’s tired of answering the question, but he doesn’t let on.  “Better,” he says instead, keeping it brief.

  
Dean gives him a long, scrutinizing look, which Jax manages not to fidget through.

 

“Tara says you might be out in a few days.”

 

“I’d like to go home now, but no joy.”

 

Dean’s lips turn up in a smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and Jax feels his stomach flip as he flails for something to say.

 

“Look, Dean—“

 

“Look, Jax—“

 

They stop, laugh nervously, Jax gesturing for Dean to go first, Dean doing likewise.

  
At last, Dean breaks the tension.  “You were right.  I don’t have any right to dictate to you where or how you live.  I don’t own you.  You don’t own me.  And I’m sorry if it seems like I was putting you or the Sons down.  You know I—  You guys are like—  I didn’t mean it that way.  I just need my own space, I guess.”

 

Dean gives an empty laugh, shakes his head.  “I spent my whole life in the Impala or crappy little motel rooms, you’d think I’d have gotten used to sharing my space.  But…” Dean abandons words in favor of an eloquent shrug.

 

“Anyway, I just wanted you to know I understand.  And if this is the way it’s got to be, I get it.  You know where I am.  You ever want to stop by, or…whatever…I’m there.  That’s all.  Take care, man.”

 

Jax is so caught up in processing the fact that Dean’s just delivered what amounts to a break-up speech that he fails to respond at all, and Dean’s out the door and down the hall before Jax manages to call his name.

 

Through the thundering roar in his ears at the effort, Jax strains to hear Dean coming back, pain-squinched eyes glued to the doorway, which remains damningly empty.

 _What the fuck just happened?_   He thinks. 

 

Then, aloud, “What the fuck?”

 

No one’s there to answer, of course.

 

*****

 

If Dean is surprised to see that it’s Jax leaning on his doorbell when he swings open said door with an irritated yank, he doesn’t let it show.

 

Wordless, he steps back, indicating only by the movement that Jax is welcome to come inside.

 

The step up from the low concrete stoop across the lintel is an act of will.  Behind him, Bobby gives the Jeep’s horn a half-hearted honk before pulling away from the curb.

 

Still without words exchanged between them, Jax makes a point of moving past Dean down the hall toward the kitchen, where he plugs the sink and turns the tap on wide open.  While the water rushes into the basin, he moves to the wall next to the refrigerator, and with a casual tug that takes more out of him than he’ll admit, he pulls the phone from the wall.

 

It hits the floor with a crash, the receiver bouncing and skittering across the linoleum, the plastic case flinging shrapnel at ankle level.

 

Dean leans in the kitchen door and says, “You could have just shut the ringer off.”

 

Jax shrugs and pulls his walkie from his belt, holds it up to show that he’s turning off the volume, and then drops it into the now-full sink.

 

“That’s kind of overkill, don’t you think?” Dean observes, his tone mildly amused but impassive, like he sees this kind of insanity every day.  “Besides, just because you’re dispensable doesn’t mean I am.  What if someone needs to reach me?”

 

“Bobby knows where we are.”  Jax emphasizes the collective, and Dean’s tight nod says he catches Jax’s meaning just fine.

 

Jax crosses the kitchen in two quick strides and swings, catching Dean across the chin.  His head snaps back with a satisfying thud against the doorframe, and he staggers, shakes his head, brings his hands up in a defensive posture as much a part of him as his leather jacket or his flirtatious smile.

 

“That’s for dying on me again, you fucker,” Jax explains, waiting for Dean to make a move.

 

Dean lowers his hands slowly, his weight still centered on his heels, eyes wary and watchful.

 

“Okay,” he says, recognizing Jax’s point.  “We done?”

 

“I’m just getting started,” Jax promises, moving in again.  Dean backs down the hallway toward the living room, hands once again up but reluctance in his every step.

 

“C’mon, man.  You don’t want to do this now. You want to beat the crap out of me later, when you’re healed up, fine, but this is just stupid.”

 

Jax is inexorable, though, and he swings again, missing because his ribs hurt and he’s been bed-bound for days and he almost fucking died not long ago.

 

And because Dean, although he actually _did_ die, seems to have recovered more quickly from his ordeal. 

 

Motherfucker.

 

“What’s this about, anyway?  Is this just the dying thing?  Because honestly, Jax, neither of us has much of a shelf life.  It’s only a matter of time, and…”

 

Maybe he’s distracted by what he’s trying to say, but this time Jax lands one, a weak, glancing blow off of Dean’s right cheek.  Dean barely staggers, doesn’t even rub his face.

 

Cocky son of a bitch.

 

Dean grins.  “Besides, even when you’re a hundred percent, I can take you.  Now…well, it’s nowhere near a fair fight.”

 

The bravado falls on deaf ears.  Jax had dragged himself out of his hospital bed, dressed himself with shallow, panting breaths, and found a way down from his second floor room, called Bobby from a utility closet near the staff entrance, and waited until the man had picked him up.

 

The ride had been an exercise in self-control, every bump and jostle another reminder of the parts that were still broken in his body.

 

Every step from the curb to Dean’s door had been a suspended moment of supreme endurance.

 

And he’d done all of it so he could beat the shit out of Dean and then fuck him until he swore he’d never leave Jax again.

 

Those two goals firmly in mind, Jax swings a fourth time, or rather, staggers toward Dean and flails, and this time, Dean’s mask slips, the cocky grin turning to irritation.

 

Dean shoves Jax hard enough to propel him into the wall, and Jax can’t stifle a small, wounded sound as he drags in a reluctant breath through a chest full of knives.

 

Dean’s hands go up, palms out, and he steps back, saying, “Stop, Jax.  Stop. I don’t want to hurt you.”

 

“Too late,” Jax answers, and it means more than the cold pain-sweat breaking out on his forehead or the way his breath rasps loud in the stillness of Dean’s living room.

 

Dean drops his hands to his sides, closes his eyes and lowers his head, breathing with a regularity that belies the tension in his shoulders and the way his hands fist and open, fist and open.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says at last, the sound ragged, like he’s gone ten rounds with a tank engine.

 

“Fuck sorry, Dean,” Jax answers, moving in on Dean, taking advantage of his temporary distraction to get up close to him.  “We’re both sorry.  It doesn’t mean a thing.  What matters is this—“ he asserts, hands coming up to push Dean back toward the opposite wall.  It costs him in searing, tight bands of agony across his chest, but Dean’s startled sound and the way he loses his balance, flings his arms out to stop himself from falling on his ass—it’s worth it.

 

“We’re not doing this,” Dean says, almost a question, eyes wide.  “You’re not—  We can’t—“

 

“I thought that’s why you wanted this place.  A little privacy so we could make some noise.”

 

And he’s up in Dean’s space again, herding him against the wall with his chest, pinning him there with a knee between his thighs.  He bites Dean’s bottom lip until Dean moans and stutters out, “J-Jax, d-d-on’t,” which Jax ignores in favor of rubbing his knee up against the tender place between Dean’s legs, just behind his balls, grinding the seam of Dean’s jeans into him in a way that has to hurt.

  
The tenor of Dean’s moan changes, pain and reluctant pleasure there, and Jax laughs, filthy and unhappy, and says, “This what you wanted?”

 

“No, Jax, n—“

 

It’s unconvincing, given the way he can’t finish the simple word for the breathless pleasure wracking him.

 

At last, Dean surrenders, bringing his hands up to bracket Jax’s hips and pull him closer.  Jax leans into him, licking Dean’s swollen lower lip until Dean opens his mouth with a breathy sound and Jax is inside, using his tongue to take Dean apart, implying other things with every filthy swipe.

 

When he pulls away at last, Dean is panting, staring at Jax eye to eye from inches away, his face the picture of conflict.

 

“This won’t solve anything,” Dean says, voice hardly more than a rumor of words.

 

“It solves everything, Dean,” and then Jax leans into him again, this time to trace the delicate edge of Dean’s ear while whispering words that he’s only ever said before under the influence of morphine.

 

When he’s done talking, he starts tracing a line down Dean’s neck with his tongue, feeling the muscles moving as Dean swallows hard, hearing Dean’s hitched breath as he takes in what Jax has said.

  
He pauses at the hollow of Dean’s throat long enough to tug at the hem of Dean’s tee-shirt, backing off when Dean moves to do as Jax has asked.

 

When Dean’s stripped from the waist up, Jax moves back with his mouth on the throb of Dean’s heart in his throat, biting the blue vein hard enough to wring a choked sound from Dean before moving down to take a flat nipple between his teeth, roughing it with his tongue before moving to the other, Dean’s hands impatient now in Jax’s hair, down his neck, across his back.

 

“Jax,” Dean urges, trying to pull Jax back up to his mouth, but Jax ignores the tug on his shoulders and then his hair, instead following the midline between Dean’s ribs, that defined valley that arrows toward his belly, the hard muscles under his tongue jumping now and then when he touches a sensitive spot, Dean loosing a surprised cry when Jax pauses to delve into his navel with an obscene, wet sound.

 

“Jax,” Dean tries again, “Let me,” but Jax isn’t listening.  He pauses only long enough to pop the top button of Dean’s jeans and slide the zipper down, nuzzling against the waistband of Dean’s boxers as he works, dragging in a long, painful breath full of the heady scent of Dean’s desire.

 

When he reaches inside Dean’s boxers to lift out the full, silken weight of him, Dean moans and spreads his legs as far as the hobbling denim will allow.  As if he’s balancing something precious on his head, Jax lowers himself to his knees, blowing out hard through the incising pain until he can rest his forehead against the rough hair of Dean’s exposed thigh and breathe hot, moist air on Dean’s straining cock.

 

Dean whispers Jax’s name, cups the back of his head, not urging him on, just letting him know they’re connected.  Jax plants a wet, open-mouthed kiss in the nest of curls just above where Dean’s cock rises hard from his body, and Dean says his name again, this time with the quality of a prayer.

 

“You don’t have to—“ Dean begins, but he’s cut off by Jax taking him swift and hard, sucking the head between his lips in a tight ring and then widening his mouth to allow the rest of Dean in.  When he feels Dean butting against the back of his throat, he swallows, taking Dean all the way in, opening his throat until Jax’s nose is tickled by springy hair and his head is filled with the smell of Dean’s heat and want.

 

“God,” Dean groans, “Jax,” and Jax swallows again, using his throat and his tongue on the underside of Dean’s cock to ramp him up.  Spit streams in thin ropes from the corners of his mouth, and he feels the still-healing laceration on his lip tear open, tastes his own blood even as his hands grip Dean’s thighs and urge him to thrust.

 

Dean starts a gentle rocking, his words of protest lost in a long, drawn-out moan as Jax sucks harder and reaches around to worm a finger between Dean’s cheeks and into his tight hole.

 

Beneath the hand that still grips him, Dean’s thigh trembles as he loses control and starts to pound into Jax’s throat, a string of blasphemy and pleading leaving his lips as Jax coaxes his finger in further, crooks it up to find the sweet spot, chokes a little on a particularly hard thrust, and then swallows convulsively as Dean shouts and comes in pulsing waves.

 

Spent, Dean sags against the wall as Jax pulls his finger out and releases Dean’s soft cock with a wet sound that makes it twitch in Jax’s gentling hand.

 

A minute or eon later, Dean leans over to help Jax to his feet and then bundle him in against Dean, where he can feel the dampness of Dean’s cock through his Sons tee-shirt and the rapid pulse of his racing heart beneath his chin, where it rests against Dean’s collarbone.

 

From this position, Dean returns the words Jax had spoken first, adding still more, words Jax had never imagined hearing, never known he’d wanted to hear until Dean said them in the still, twilight hush of his living room.

 

Mouth tasting of Dean, Jax kisses him quiet and then moans himself when Dean slides a hand into his jeans and wraps it around Jax’s neglected cock.

 

It’s over quickly, Dean still saying impossible things into Jax’s ear, Jax shuddering apart in Dean’s hand, spending himself in a slow spray that fills the room with the smell of spunk.

 

Casually, Dean wipes a hand on his jeans, which he pulls up only after making sure Jax can stand upright without aid.

“Let’s go to bed,” Dean suggests then, running his thumb over Jax’s lips and coming away with it coated in sticky red.  “Come to bed with me,” he suggests, a question and something else in it.

 

Jax nods, says, “Yeah,” and follows Dean down the hall, past the kitchen to the master bedroom, where Dean takes off Jax’s cut, laying it carefully on a chair, and then strips him of his tee-shirt with infinite care, wincing along with Jax as the motion pulls at his injured ribs.

 

He unbuttons and unzips him, helps him out of his sneakers and socks, drops his jeans and puts them aside when Jax steps out of them.

 

Naked, Jax leans into Dean, shivering at the contrast of the cool air of the back bedroom and the heat of Dean’s body.

 

At last, Dean leads Jax to the bed, turns down the covers, urges Jax to get in.  Jax does, turning his head on the pillow to watch Dean strip with an unhurried efficiency Jax has always admired.

  
When Dean, too, is naked, he climbs in beside Jax, and there’s a moment of awkward waiting while they size each other up.

  
They aren’t cuddlers by nature.  Typically, they each take up as much of the bed as the other will allow, limbs touching and tangled but not by design.

 

Now, though, there’s a mutual and unspoken urge to closeness, though Jax is limited by his injuries, which are starting to catch up with him, the pain increasing, exhaustion dragging him under.

 

At last, Dean offers an arm, and Jax settles his head against the crook of it, his near hand resting on Dean’s thigh.

 

Dean presses a kiss to Jax’s temple, an uncharacteristic and tender gesture that makes Jax have to close his eyes against it.

 

Dean was right—this hasn’t solved anything.  But Jax was right, too:  Nothing can be wrong when it’s like this between them.

 

*****

 

When Jax finally gets up the courage to open his eyes, sure that it’s going to hurt like hell—everything else does—he discovers the room bathed in bright, mid-morning light.  Dean is gone, his side of the bed cool to the touch, but Jax can hear sounds from the down the hall—water running, something sizzling, and if he takes a very careful deep breath, he thinks he might smell…pancakes?

 

That’s enough to get him up, though the process takes a dictionary’s worth of swearing and a sweating effort by the time his bare feet hit the floor.  There’s a tee-shirt and sweats draped over the footboard, which he climbs into gingerly before shuffling out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom.

  
There, he finds a brand new toothbrush on the sink side and a blue fluffy towel folded on the toilet tank, too.

 

Jax does his thing in the bathroom, happy to notice not a single spot of blood in his spit, and makes his way to the kitchen with something approaching a geriatric rabbit’s race pace.

“Hey,” Dean says from the stove, where he’s flipping pancakes with suspicious dexterity.  Jax has never actually seen Dean cook. Bobby always makes meals at the clubhouse, or they fend for themselves with sandwiches, which don’t count as cooking in Jax’s book.

 

The table’s set for two, and there’s fresh-squeezed orange juice in small glasses at each white plate.

 

“Can I help?”  
  
“Nah, we’re good,” and Dean turns far enough to smile at Jax in a way that says he’s talking about more than just breakfast.

  
Jax returns the smile, and then there they are, grinning at each other like idiots, Jax with his hand on a glass of OJ, Dean with a spatula in his fist.

 

“I think it’s okay,” Dean says then, and it takes Jax a second to realize that Dean’s eyes are on Jax’s walkie, drying upright in the dish drainer.  “But my phone is toast.”  On the counter next to the sink are the shattered remains of an old yellow wall phone.

  
“Sorry about that.”

 

Dean shrugs.  “I’m not, considering…”  His grin is lewd, and Jax briefly considers skipping pancakes and going back to bed.

 

Except he’s pretty sure fucking would kill him at this point.

 

“You going back to the hospital?” Dean asks, and Jax looks up from his contemplation of the laminate surface of the table to see worry in Dean’s eyes.

 

“Nope,” Jax says, shaking his head.

  
“Clubhouse?”

 

“Nope,” he repeats, mugging solemnity.

 

“Going to try your hand at being homeless?  I hear the benches outside the library are fantastic this time of year.”

 

“Shut up,” Jax gruffs.  “I’m staying here, asshole.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.  You got a problem with that?”

 

Dean shakes his head.  “No problem.”  Then, “You owe me a phone.”

 

Jax laughs and eats the pancakes Dean slides onto his plate, slathering them in syrup, smiling as Dean does the same.

 

“I could get used to this,” he offers, feeling his way, and Dean’s muttered, “I hope so,” makes him warm in his chest.

He doesn’t know when he turned into a fucking girl, but if it makes him feel like this—like the rest of the world is a distant, restless dream and only this—a simple meal, a kitchen table, his lover across from him—only this matters, well, hell, he’ll start wearing frilly pink panties.

 

A knock at the door shatters his reverie, and Jax grimaces, suddenly losing his appetite.

 

“It’s probably Tara coming by to rip your balls off,” Dean observes with a smirk, rising to answer the door.  “Stay put,” he suggests.

 

Jax doesn’t need to be told twice.  His ribs ache with every exhale and his face hurts when he chews.  He’s tired despite his long sleep and he thinks he might have strained a muscle in his throat.

  
No way he’s explaining that one to Tara.

 

But it’s not Tara who comes into the kitchen ahead of Dean.

 

“Where the fuck have you been?” Ope barks, taking in the domestic scene with eyes half angry, half surprised.

 

Jax just raises an eyebrow.  The answer’s obvious.

 

“Tara was frantic, and all Bobby would say is that you were fine.  You’re not fine, Jax.  You look like shit!  What the fuck were you thinking?”

 

Behind Ope, Dean leans in the doorway to the kitchen, his posture identical to the day before, when he’d been the one challenging Jax’s presence there.

 

Jax stands, not caring that the effort it takes is visible.  Ope appears unsympathetic, and that’s just fine.  Jax took this cost on himself, and it was worth it.

 

“I was thinking that I’d spend some time with my lover in our house,” Jax explains.  “I was thinking that it wasn’t anyone’s business where I was and that if there was a major emergency, Bobby would tell you where I was.  I was thinking that I have a right to do whatever the fuck I want, within reason.”

 

Ope opens his mouth like he’ll argue and then changes his mind, turning his head to take in Dean’s face, which wears an expression of pleasant blandness.

 

“Okay, then,” Ope says at last, grudgingly.  “Next time, just warn a guy.”

 

“I did warn a guy—Bobby.  I knew he wouldn’t let Tara or Rita bully him into spilling my location.”  Softening the implication that Opie is whipped, Jax adds, “We needed the time alone.”

 

Ope nods and says, “Okay,” again.  “Are you going back to the hospital?”

 

Jax shakes his head.  “No, I think I’ll head over to the club, if Dean has time to take me.”  He gives Dean a questioning look, and Dean nods.

 

“I’ve got to pack,” Jax explains.

 

“I can take you,” Ope offers.  There’s a peace offering in there, and maybe a plea.  Ope’s been his best friend for a long time.

 

Jax’s smile widens.  “You going to give me roadhead?”

 

Ope snorts and says, “You going to explain it to Rita?”

 

Jax holds his hands up in surrender and Ope laughs his way out of the kitchen.  Dean shows him out and returns.

 

“So that’s it?”

 

Jax nods.  “That’s it.”

 

“Huh,” Dean observes.  “And all it took was dying again.”

 

“Shut up,” Jax answers, sitting back down to his breakfast.

 

*****

 

 _What fighting won’t solve, fucking usually does.  Or vice versa.  The rest isn’t really worth bothering with, is it?_ (Acts of the Sons 48: 1-2 [apocryphal chapter])

 

He can’t see a single blade of green grass from the sidewalk to the gazebo at the center of the park.  Everyone in Charming has come out for this.

 

“Wow,” Juice says.  “I’ve never seen it this packed.”

 

The kid looks good—still pale, both arms in hard casts, too, but definitely better, the sun doing wonders for his hospital tan.  He’s in a wheelchair, but yesterday he took a few steps with Ope on one side of him and Chibs on the other, just in case, and Doctor McCrory has already revised his original prognosis.  It’s looking like Juice might make a full recovery.

 

“Hangings always bring out a crowd,” Dean answers, shading his eyes to get a better look at the figures at the front of the park.

 

Under the gazebo’s white rotunda, Jackson Teller stands at the center of a half-moon of delegates from the South and Southwestern Confederacy.  They’d wrapped up negotiations two days ago, had a ceremonial private signing yesterday and now here they are at three o’clock on a sunny California summer’s day to announce to the people their official launch as a newly formed alliance of independent city-states.

 

Or something.

 

Dean isn’t paying much attention to the delegates’ speeches.  Once you’ve heard one—“Peace yadda yadda, prosperity, et cetera, growth blah blah blah…”  Well, they get old.

 

He’s got eyes and ears only for Jax, who’s pale and washed-out, except for the putrid rainbow of bruises under his still-swollen eye, along his cheekbone and jaw, on his collarbone…

 

Oh, wait.  That isn’t a bruise.

  
Oops.

  
Grinning, Dean sharpens his focus when Jax steps to the front, thanking the delegates for their hard work and the sacrifice of their time, for traveling all this way and for being willing to wait until Jax himself could be there to see their work come to fruition.

  
It sounds good.

 

Better comes when Jax’s smile slips away, his expression growing somber, as he says, “Unfortunately, this summit was not without its opponents.  As you know, one of the delegates, from Austin, tried to sabotage the agreement and keep us from completing our work.  What’s left to the delegates today is a final task:  To determine the traitor’s fate.”

 

Jax nods his chin at the back of the crowd, who murmur and crane their heads around to see who Jax is signaling.

 

From behind Dean, Ope and Sack move ahead, dragging between them Austin, who’s cuffed and in ankle restraints, his shuffle reluctant, breath harsh in his throat, face red with exertion and screaming.

“Take your hands off me, you motherfucking cocksuckers!” he screams.

 

Casually, like he’s swatting a fly, Ope smacks hard Austin with an open hand.  The sound is shocking in the sudden hush.  Austin’s head bobs in recoil from the blow, and he spits a stream of watery blood onto the grass near Opie’s boot.

 

“Watch your mouth,” Ope says with menace, quiet voice carrying.  “There are children here.”

 

Austin grins defiantly and shouts, “Fuck you!”

 

This time, Ope’s hand is closed and Austin staggers, staying upright only by diligent effort on Sack’s part.

 

The traitor is quiet the rest of the way to the gazebo.

 

Once he’s there, standing under his own power, though swaying some, Ope and Sack give him a little space, and the delegates likewise distance themselves.  Only Jax remains near enough to speak to Austin, whose eyes at last comes up to meet Jax’s, his expression shocked, the color leaving his face so suddenly, Dean wonders if he’s about to faint.

 

“The delegate from Austin, Texas, whose real name is Steven Ulrich, stands accused of soliciting three minors of Charming to do his dirty work for him, namely killing me.  He misled these minors into believing that by killing me, they would be paving the way for new and better leadership in Charming.  Through bribery, coercion, and eventually threats, he forced three good kids” (Dean snorts at the description of D.J., and a woman two rows up gives him a dirty look over her shoulder) “to commit a violent crime.”

 

“It is the opinion of the people of Charming, California, that Steven Ulrich of Austin, Texas, deserves the most severe punishment under our laws.”

 

In fact, the Town Council of Charming had voted unanimously to let Jax Teller and the Sons of Anarchy do whatever they wanted with Austin, as long as it didn’t involve them.

 

“After ascertaining that it was not the wish of the people of Austin, Texas, that Steve be returned to them—their exact words were, ‘Hell, no.  You can keep him.’”

 

A wave of nervous laughter breaks across the crowd.

 

“We’ve decided that it should be left to the delegates of the SSS to determine the fate of one of their own who proved treacherous and betrayed not only me and the people of Charming but also the summit and the delegates themselves.

 

Delegates?  What say you?”

 

Dean has the advantage of knowing that this part had been rehearsed, but it’s still impressive nevertheless, and the crowd reacts with a slow murmur that starts to build in volume as first one and then another delegate steps forward and says, “We find Steven Ulrich guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, corrupting a minor, and planning treason against the new confederacy.  For this, we find that Steven Ulrich must be led out of the gates of Charming to the Testing Place and there left to the Judgment of God.”

 

When the five delegates have spoken, Jax again steps forward to deliver the final words in the matter.

 

“The people of Charming and the confederacy of South and Southwestern States have spoken.  Let their will be made law.”

 

Austin starts to sputter, face once again red, eyes wide and wild. “You can’t do this!  I have rights!  I’m a citizen of the United States of America!”

 

As one, the delegates and Jax turn their backs on him, and Ope and Sack lead him away, still screaming about his rights.

 

They’ll take him out to the Testing Place at dawn tomorrow.  It’ll be the last thing the delegates witness before they head for home.

 

Of course, no one’s sure that God will condemn Austin.  He may be left to wander, defenseless and without provisions, through the ravaged world beyond Charming’s safe boundaries, but that’s okay, too.  Blue’s got sharpshooters on the wall who haven’t had any real practice in weeks.

 

Once Austin is far enough away that his ruckus is lost in the crowd’s restless susurrus, Jax raises his hands—carefully, Dean notices, and not without a wince—and says, “Now that the business portion of the day is out of the way, let’s get to the partying!”

 

This is greeted with loud cheers, catcalls, and whistles, enough that Dean has to shout, “Quiet down!” several times before they realize he’s talking at all.

 

As they did for the accused, the crowd parts for Dean to make his way to the gazebo.

 

Jax’s face is mostly neutral, though around his eyes is a question.  This part hadn’t been rehearsed.

 

When Dean arrives at the gazebo, he steps up into Jax’s space, takes his face gently between his hands, and lays on him a long, slow, wet kiss that has some of the crowd saying, “Awwww!” and the rest of them calling out lewd suggestions.

 

Breaking the kiss at last, Jax’s dazed eyes on him, Dean turns back to the crowd, looks at Jax, and asks, “So, this new world order got any marriage laws?”

 

Jax smiles, slow and wicked, and says, “Why?  You gonna make an honest man of me?”

 

Dean snorts.  “Why start now?  I just figured the tax benefits would be better…”

 

As the crowd roars its approval, Jax pulls Dean to him and returns the kiss.


End file.
